World Mouse: Exploring Interactions with a Cross-Reality Cursor

As Extended Reality (XR) systems increasingly map and understand the physical world, interacting with these blended representations remains challenging. The current push for "natural" inputs has its trade-offs: touch is limited by human reach and fatigue, while gaze often lacks the precision for fine interaction. To bridge this gap, we introduce World Mouse, a cross-reality cursor that reinterprets the familiar 2D desktop mouse for complex 3D scenes. The system is driven by two core mechanisms: within-object interaction, which uses surface normals for precise cursor placement, and between-object navigation, which leverages interpolation to traverse empty space. Unlike previous virtual-only approaches, World Mouse leverages semantic segmentation and mesh reconstruction to treat physical objects as interactive surfaces. Through a series of prototypes, including object manipulation and screen-to-world transitions, we illustrate how cross-reality cursors may enable seamless interactions across real and virtual environments.

Esen K. Tütüncü, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Khushman Patel, Eric J. Gonzalez · 2026