Physics

Maximum bubble pressure method

Gesture

Virtual image

Interaction technique

Agronomy

Biology

Human–computer interaction

Operating system

Interface (matter)

Engineering

Bubble

Naturalness

Parallel computing

Haptic technology

Artificial intelligence

Systems engineering

Controller (irrigation)

Mobile device

Virtual reality

Computer science

Task (project management)

Quantum mechanics

Object (grammar)

Computer vision

Multimodal Technologies and Interaction

Virtual reality devices are used for several application domains, such as medicine, entertainment, marketing and training. A handheld controller is the common interaction method for direct object manipulation in virtual reality environments. Using hands would be a straightforward way to directly manipulate objects in the virtual environment if hand-tracking technology were reliable enough. In recent comparison studies, hand-based systems compared unfavorably against the handheld controllers in task completion times and accuracy. In our controlled study, we compare these two interaction techniques with a new hybrid interaction technique which combines the controller tracking with hand gestures for a rigid object manipulation task. The results demonstrate that the hybrid interaction technique is the most preferred because it is intuitive, easy to use, fast, reliable and it provides haptic feedback resembling the real-world object grab. This suggests that there is a trade-off between naturalness, task accuracy and task completion time when using these direct manipulation interaction techniques, and participants prefer to use interaction techniques that provide a balance between these three factors.

Trade-Off between Task Accuracy, Task Completion Time and Naturalness for Direct Object Manipulation in Virtual Reality