Application of the steering law to virtual reality walking navigation interfaces. (December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Monteiro, Pedro; Carvalho, Diana; Melo, Miguel; Branco, Frederico; Bessa, Maximino
• Is Part Of: Computers & graphics. Volume 77(2018)
• Page Start: 80
• Page End: 87
• Publication Date: 2018-12
• Subjects: Virtual reality -- Navigation interfaces -- Steering law -- Performance; Computer graphics -- Periodicals; 006.6
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cag.2018.10.003
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0097-8493

Abstract

Highlights: Physically walking in VR increases users' performance and satisfaction. Physically walking in VR decreases cybersickness symptoms. Gamepads yield good performance but high cybersickness symptoms. VirtuSphere has good user satisfaction values, but poor performance. Graphical abstract: Abstract: Navigation through immersive virtual environments is a key concept for virtual reality as it allows users to explore those environments. Therefore, it is important to understand virtual reality navigation interfaces and their impact on the users' experience. This paper presents an objective performance evaluation of two types of navigation: natural (real walking and walk-in-place) vs. unnatural (gamepad). Steering Law was the objective performance metric chosen since it captures the relationship between the time to travel a path and the difficulty of that path. In addition to performance, subjective metrics were also considered, namely the feeling of presence, cybersickness and user satisfaction. The experiments consisted of having participants complete a series of paths with different indexes of difficulty and the time that a participant took to walk each path was measured. Overall results show that the navigation through real walking yielded better results when it comes to performance, cybersickness, and user satisfaction than the walk-in-place and gamepad navigation interfaces.