This paper discusses the use of a common computer mouse as a pointing interface for tabletop displays. In the use of a common computer mouse for tabletop displays, there might be an angular distance between the screen coordinates and the mouse control coordinates. To align those coordinates, this paper introduces a screen coordinates calibration technique using a shadow cursor. A shadow cursor is the basic idea of manipulating a mouse cursor without any visual feedbacks. The shadow cursor plays an important role in obtaining the angular distance between the two coordinates. It enables the user to perform a simple mouse manipulation so that screen coordinates calibration will be completed in less than a second.

This paper discusses VDT syndrome from the point of view of the viewing distance between a computer screen and user's eyes. This paper conducts a series of experiments to show an impact of the viewing distance on task performance. In the experiments, two different viewing distances of 50cm and 350cm with the same viewing angle of 30degrees are taken into consideration. The results show that the long viewing distance enables people to manipulate the mouse more slowly, more correctly and more precisely than the short.

This manuscript introduces a pointing interface for a tabletop display with a reflex in eye-hand coordination. The reflex is a natural response to inconsistency between kinetic information of a mouse and visual feedback of the mouse cursor. The reflex yields information on which side the user sees the screen from, so that the screen coordinates are aligned with the user's position.

We present a way to correct light distortion of views looking into an aquarium. When we see fish in an aquarium, they appear closer and distorted due to light distortion. In order to correct the distortion, light rays travelling in the aquarium directly towards an observer should hit him/her after emerging from the aquarium. In this manuscript, those light rays are captured by a perspective camera at specific positions, not the observer position. And then it is shown that the taken images are successfully merged as a single one that is not affected by light distortion.