PanoCue: An Efficient Visual Cue With a Omnidirectional Panoramic View for Finding a Target in 3D Space

Abstract

Finding a specific object is one of the basic tasks in both physical and virtual environments. However, visually scanning large scenes can be inefficient and frustrating, especially when the target is outside of one’s field of view. As a result, there have been several studies for supporting target finding tasks in a three-dimensional environment with various visual cues. However, most studies focused on conveying either the relative position or the distance of the target to users. In this study, we propose PanoCue, which is a visual cue that overlays a panorama view of the surroundings at the center of the user’s field of view for conveying both the position and the distance of a target in a 3D space with respect to the user’s location and head orientation. For evaluation, we conducted a user study with 20 participants where they were asked to find a target under different visual cue conditions: PanoCue, Radar, Arrow, and a baseline without cues. As a result, we found that the presence of visual cues improves task performance and that PanoCue significantly reduces the travel distance. Findings also showed that our feedback design received positive ratings in terms of easiness, fatigue, and satisfaction.