Abstract
It is generally accepted that the use of natural interaction provides a positive impact in Virtual Reality (VR) applications. Therefore, it is important to understand what is the best way to integrate and visualize this feature in VR. For this reason, this paper presents a comparative study of the integration of natural hand interaction in two immersive VR systems: a Cave Audio Visual Experience (CAVE) system –where users’ real hands are visible– and a non-see-through Head-Mounted Display (HMD) system –where only a virtual representation of the hands is possible–. In order to test the suitability of using this type of interaction in a CAVE and compare it to an HMD, we raise six research questions related to task performance, usability and perception differences regarding natural hand interaction with these two systems. To answer these questions, we designed an experiment where users have to complete a pick-and-place task with virtual balls and a text-typing task with virtual keyboards. In both systems, the same tracking technology, based on a Leap Motion device, was used. To the best of our knowledge this is the first academic work addressing a comparison of this type. Objective and subjective data were collected during the experiments. The results show that the HMD has a performance, preference and usability advantage over the CAVE with respect to the integration of natural hand interaction. Nevertheless, the results also show that the CAVE system can be, as well, successfully used in combination with an optical hand tracking device.
Highlights
It is generally accepted that the use of natural interfaces in Virtual Reality (VR) systems provides a positive impact in the use of these technologies
As can be seen from the above reported papers, the pros of one or other system might depend on the purpose of the experiment. This fact is reported for instance in [19], where authors argue that Cave Audio Visual Experience (CAVE) can be useful to evoke happy and positive emotions, whereas Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) can be advantageous to evoke negative emotions. Another example can be found in [15], which aims at measuring the accuracy of perceived distances in a virtual environment, where the results show that the HMD provides the best results for distances above 8 m whereas the CAVE provides the best results for close distances
The smaller the size of the spheres, the more time, errors and pick-up gestures are generally needed to complete this pick-andplace task, in the case of the HMD, the significance level is slightly above the 0.05 limit for the errors datasets. These results suggest a possible answer to Research Question 3 (RQ3), since the size of the spheres has a significant effect in the performance of the users for this task
Summary
It is generally accepted that the use of natural interfaces in Virtual Reality (VR) systems provides a positive impact in the use of these technologies. With these interfaces users can perform direct manipulations of virtual objects without the need of additional tools, bridging the human-computer barrier [33]. Recent advances in hand gesture recognition make it possible to consider user’s hands to manipulate virtual objects in different VR systems. The integration of this technology is becoming common in those VR systems based on non-seethrough Head-Mounted Displays (HMD). The real hands will partially occlude the virtual objects, making the interaction potentially challenging
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