Effect of Visual Awareness of the Real Hand on User Performance in Partially Immersive Virtual Environments: Presence of Virtual Kinesthetic Conflict

ABSTRACT

Considering 3D interactions in Virtual-Reality (VR), it is critical to study how visual awareness of real hands influences users scaled interaction performance in different VR environments. We used Fitts’s law to analyze user performance with five different Control-Display (CD) ratios (1:1 to 1:5). Fifteen participants performed a 3D selection task in three different setups: Head-Mounted Display (HMD), and two variations of the Active One-walled 3D Projection (AOP), with and without visual awareness of the real hand (AOP-A and AOP-B, respectively). The results show that the throughput of AOP-B is significantly higher than that of the AOP-A and HMD (p = .00001 and 0.0002, respectively) which suggests the existence of a conflict between the kinesthetic and visual real-hand movements, which we term as Virtual Kinesthetic Conflict (VKC). To reduce VKC during scaled movements, tasks should be designed such that the visual awareness of the real hand is avoided.

Disclosure of potential conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest in this study.

Notes

1. https://www.benq.com/en/projector/cinehome-home-cinema/w1050.html (accessed April 30, 2019).

2. https://www.vive.com/eu/.

3. https://unity.com/(accessed April 30, 2019).

4. https://www.steamvr.com/en/(accessed April 30, 2019).

5. Ergonomic Requirements for Office Work with Visual Display Terminals (VDTs): Requirements for non-keyboard input devices, International Organization for Standardization, 2000.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph H. R. Isaac

Joseph H. R. Isaac received his B.E. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Jeppiaar Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India in 2015. He is pursuing his Interdisciplinary Direct Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Applied Mechanics in the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Tamil Nadu, India. His research interests include Virtual Reality, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Applications of Computer Vision in healthcare, such as object tracking for medical simulations.

Madhan Kumar V.

Madhan Kumar V. received his Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Anna University of Technology Tirunelveli, TN, India and the Master's degree in Medical Electronics from College of Engineering Guindy, TN, India, in 2011 and 2014, respectively. He has joined Touch Lab, IIT Madras, as a Ph.D. Scholar and his research interests, are in modeling and simulation, Virtual Reality and Psychophysics.

Manivannan M.

Manivannan M. received the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He received post-doctoral training in Haptics at MIT, Cambridge. Before MIT, he received another post-doctoral training in CAD standards and sensors network at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Maryland. He served as a chief software architect of Yantric Inc. before joining IIT Madras.