By Lisa Zyga
(Left) An artist tests Drawing on Air, which uses a stereoscopic desktop display, stylus and tracking device. (Right) An illustration of a 3D bat skeleton created with the system. Credit: Daniel F. Keefe, et al. ©2007 IEEE.
By putting on a virtual reality mask, holding a stylus in one hand and a tracking device in the other, an artist can draw 3D objects in the air with unprecedented precision. This new system is called “Drawing on Air,” and researchers have designed the interface to be intuitive and provide the necessary control for artists to illustrate complicated artistic, scientific, and medical subjects.