Even when people take it for granted, the cursor is one of the most important features of modern computing. Without it and its equivalent in touch devices, very little could be done. The advent of 3-D technology has created a dilemma for its developers: how to port the cursor into the virtual worlds. Researchers at the University of Montreal in Canada may have solved the challenge, as they unveiled a virtual reality software earlier this month at the SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference in Los Angeles.

The new "cursor" has been reimagined in order to navigate a different computing space. Here, users select an object through a device such as a smartphone, a tablet or a wearable device that acts as a trackpad or a mouse, according to Live Science. 

A controlling plane appears in the virtual world, which corresponds to the physical device serving as a conduit touch, hand gesture and other movement inputs. This allows the user to manipulate the 3-D interactions or select virtual objects.

"We use a Butterfly-net analogy to explain how the cursor selects objects in space - the users simply sweep the 3D cursors through, for the manipulations of objects, the users can use gestures and movements such as pinching and orientation," said lead researcher Professor Tomas Dorta from the University of Montreal's School of Design, WCCFtech reported.

The 3D team's demonstration featured the use of the Hyve-3D system, which includes a high-resolution projector and a dome mirror that projects a 3-D environment onto a specially designed concave sphere made of fabric. The resulting effect creates an immersive 3-D projection that can be controlled in real-time, E&T reported.

The researchers were only able to show the 3-D cursor application for sketching but stressed that its utility can cover a wide range of fields, including architecture, medicine and entertainment.