Abstract
Visual feedback latency in virtual reality systems is inherent due to the computing time it takes to simulate the effects of user actions. Depending upon the nature of interaction and amount of latency, the impact of this latency could range from a minor degradation to a major disruption of performance. The goal of this study was to examine how visuomotor latency impacts users’ performance in a continuous steering task and how users adapt to this latency with experience. The task involved steering a bike along an illuminated path in a dark environment viewed in an HTC Vive head-mounted virtual reality display. We examined how users adapt to visuomotor latency in two different conditions: 1) when the user controlled the steering while the bike moved forward at a constant speed, and 2) when the user controlled the steering and the speed of the bike through pedaling and braking. We found that users in both conditions started with a large steering error at the beginning of exposure to visuomotor latency but then quickly adapted to the delay. We also found that when users could control their speed, they adjusted their speed based on the complexity of the path (i.e., proximity to turns) and they gradually increased their speed as they adapted to latency and gained better control over their movement. The current work supports the idea that users can adapt to visual feedback delay in virtual reality regardless of whether they control the pace of movement. The results inform the design of virtual reality simulators and teleoperation systems and give insight into perceptual-motor adaptation in the presence of latency.
Highlights
A fundamental difference between real and virtual worlds is that natural interactions in the real environment are temporally synchronous, whereas interactions in a virtual environment always involve latency due to the time it takes to simulate cause and effect reactions
We examined how users adapted to visuomotor latency in two different conditions: 1) when the bike traveled with a constant speed and 2) when the user had control over the speed of the bike through pedaling and braking
As in Experiment 1, this shows that the visuomotor latency decreased users’ ability to steer even when the user controlled the pace of interaction
Summary
A fundamental difference between real and virtual worlds is that natural interactions in the real environment are temporally synchronous, whereas interactions in a virtual environment always involve latency due to the time it takes to simulate cause and effect reactions. This inevitable delay in VR systems may impair user performance by creating a discrepancy between sensory and motor control systems. Our brains compensate for different internal latencies of sensory systems (e.g., visual) to provide coherent multi-sensory experiences This raises questions about how we perform in presence of visuomotor latency in a virtual environment and whether we can adapt to visuomotor latency. Some preliminary studies suggested that users cannot adapt to visuomotor delay in teleoperation tasks
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