Abstract
There is an increasing interest in the use of low-cost virtual reality (VR) for training and simulation. As effective training for many tasks requires efficient sensory–motor coordination, we investigated the efficiency of visually guided movement in VR using a standardised Fitts’ tapping task. Throughput is a measure of movement efficiency and was significantly lower in VR than for a touchscreen. This difference was particularly marked for targets distributed in depth and is likely to reflect known limitations of VR visual display. The addition of haptic cues increased throughput slightly. The lower throughput in VR was due to both a decrease in the precision of pointing and an increase in movement time. Movement distances were equivalent for the touchscreen and VR, but on average slightly smaller than specified by the task. VR presentation also resulted in more numerous double touches on targets. There was evidence of a small and rapid learning effect for VR, but this was limited to the first block of 9 trials (252 movements). For tasks requiring skilled sensory–motor coordination, current low-cost VR may not provide the same transfer of training as the real world.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
Data are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19896619.v1.
Notes
For an odd N targets and circle diameter ϕ, the distance between successive targets is given by \(\phi \mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\uppi }{2\mathrm{N}}\right)\).
References
Allerton DJ (2010) The impact of flight simulation in aerospace. Aeronaut J 114(1162):747–756. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001924000004231
Badash I, Burtt K, Solorzano CA, Carey JN (2016) Innovations in surgery simulation: a review of past, current and future techniques. Ann Transl Med 4(23):453. https://doi.org/10.21037/atm.2016.12.24
Barrera Machuca M, Stuerzlinger W (2019) The effect of stereo display deficiencies on virtual hand pointing. In: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. Paper 207, pp 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300437
Batmaz AU, Machuca MDB, Pham DM, Stuerzlinger W (2019) Do head-mounted display stereo deficiencies affect 3D pointing tasks in AR and VR?. In: IEEE conference on virtual reality and 3D user interfaces (VR), pp 585–592. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2019.8797975
Batmaz AU, Mutasim AK, Malekmakan M, Sadr E, Stuerzlinger W (2020) Touch the wall: Comparison of virtual and augmented reality with conventional 2D screen eye-hand coordination training systems. In: IEEE conference on virtual reality and 3D user interfaces (VR). pp 184–193. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR46266.2020.00037
Benjamini Y, Hochberg Y (1995) Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. J R Stat Soc Ser B 57(1):289–300. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2517-6161.1995.tb02031.x
Bingham GP, Bradley A, Bailey M, Vinner R (2001) Accommodation, occlusion, and disparity matching are used to guide reaching. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 27(6):1314–1334. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.27.6.1314
Botvinick M, Cohen J (1998) Rubber hands ‘feel’ touch that eyes see. Nature (london) 391(6669):756–756. https://doi.org/10.1038/35784
Brown M (2016) Exploring the magic behind the HTC Vive controller. VRHeads. Retrieved 18 November 2020. https://www.vrheads.com/exposing-magic-behind-htc-vive-controller
Chun K, Verplank B, Barbagli F, Salisbury K (2004) Evaluating haptics and 3D stereo displays using Fitts’ law. In: 3rd IEEE international workshop on haptic, audio and visual environments and their applications, pp 53–58. https://doi.org/10.1109/HAVE.2004.1391881
Clark LD, Bhagat AB, Riggs SL (2020) Extending Fitts’ law in three-dimensional virtual environments with current low-cost virtual reality technology. Int J Hum Comput Stud 139:102413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102413
Culbertson H, Schorr SB, Okamura AM (2018) Haptics: The present and future of artificial touch sensation. Annu Rev Control Robot Auton Syst 1:385–409. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-control-060117-105043
Dahlstrom N, Dekker S, van Winsen R, Nyce J (2009) Fidelity and validity of simulator training. Theor Issues Ergon Sci 10(4):305–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639220802368864
Department of Defense. (2019) Design Criteria Standard, Human Engineering. MIL-STD-1472G w/CHANGE 1.
Ding J, Levi DM (2011) Recovery of stereopsis through perceptual learning in human adults with abnormal binocular vision. Proc Natl Acad Sci 108(37):E733–E741. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1105183108
Fitts PM (1954) The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. J Exp Psychol 47(6):381–391. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055392
Fu MJ, Hershberger AD, Sano K, Çavuşoğlu MC (2011) Effect of visuo-haptic co-location on 3D Fitts' task performance. In: 2011 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems, pp 3460–3467. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2011.6094707
Hoffman DM, Girshick AR, Akeley K, Banks MS (2008) Vergence–accommodation conflicts hinder visual performance and cause visual fatigue. J vis 8(3):33. https://doi.org/10.1167/8.3.33
Howard IP, Rogers BJ (2002) Seeing in depth, Vol. 2: depth perception. University of Toronto Press, Toronto
HTC Corporation (2022) Distortion correction theory. Wave native SDK tutorials. https://hub.vive.com/storage/docs/en-us/DistortionCorrectionTheory.html
Hu HH, Gooch AA, Thompson WB, Smits BE, Rieser JJ, Shirley P (2000) Visual cues for imminent object contact in realistic virtual environments. In: Proceedings visualization 2000, IEEE, pp 179–185. https://doi.org/10.1109/VISUAL.2000.885692
International Organization for Standardization (2012) ISO/TS 9241-411Ergonomics of human-system interaction — Part 411: Evaluation methods for the design of physical input devices. Switzerland: ISO/TS.
Jaeae-Aro K-M, Kjelldahl L (1997) Effects of image resolution on depth perception in stereo and nonstereo images. In: Stereoscopic displays and virtual reality systems IV. International Society for Optics and Photonics, vol 3012(1), pp 319–326. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.274474
Joyce R, Robinson SK (2017) Passive haptics to enhance virtual reality simulations. In: AIAA Modeling and simulation technologies conference, p 1313. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2017-1313
Joyce R, Robinson SK (2019) Evaluation of a virtual reality environment for cockpit design. In: Proceedings of the human factors and ergonomics society annual meeting, vol 63(1). Sage Publications, pp 2328–2332. https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181319631309
Kalckert A, Ehrsson HH (2014) The moving rubber hand illusion revisited: comparing movements and visuotactile stimulation to induce illusory ownership. Conscious Cogn 26:117–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.02.003
Kaplan AD, Cruit J, Endsley M, Beers SM, Sawyer BD, Hancock PA (2020) The effects of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality as training enhancement methods: a meta-analysis. Hum Factors. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720820904229
Kelly JW, Cherep LA, Siegel ZD (2017) Perceived space in the HTC Vive. ACM Trans Appl Percept 15:2:1-2:16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3106155
Kohli L, Whitton MC, Brooks Jr. FP (2012) Redirected touching: the effect of warping space on task performance. In: IEEE symposium on 3D user interfaces, 4–5, pp 105–112. https://doi.org/10.1109/3DUI.2012.6184193
Lin CJ, Woldegiorgis BH (2015) Interaction and visual performance in stereoscopic displays: a review. J Soc Inform Display 23(7):319–332. https://doi.org/10.1002/jsid.378
Liu L, van Liere R, Nieuwenhuizen C, Martens J-B (2009) Comparing aimed movements in the real world and in virtual reality. In: Proceedings of the IEEE virtual reality conference, pp. 219–222. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2009.4811026
Ljubic S, Glavinic V, Kukec M (2015) Finger-based pointing performance on mobile touchscreen devices: Fitts’ law fits. In: Antona M, Stephanidis C (eds) Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Access to Today’s Technologies. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9175. Springer, Cham, pp 318–329
MacKenzie IS (2015) Fitts’ throughput and the remarkable case of touch-based target selection. In: Kurosu M (ed) Human-computer interaction: interaction technologies. HCI 2015, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 9170. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 238–249. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20916-6_23
MacKenzie I, Isokoski P (2008) Fitts' throughput and the speed-accuracy tradeoff. In: Proceedings of CHI 2008, pp 1633–1636. https://doi.org/10.1145/1357054.1357308
McAnally K, Wallis G (2022) Visual–haptic integration, action and embodiment in virtual reality. Psychol Res 86:1847–1857. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01613-3
Mon-Williams M, Tresilian JR (2000) Ordinal depth information from accommodation? Ergonomics 43(3):391–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/001401300184486
Musil R (2022) HMD geometry database. https://risa2000.github.io/hmdgdb/
Niehorster DC, Li L, Lappe M (2017) The accuracy and precision of position and orientation tracking in the HTC Vive virtual reality system for scientific research. i-Perception 8(3):1–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041669517708205
Renner RS, Velichkovsky BM, Helmert JR (2013) The perception of egocentric distances in virtual environments—a review. ACM Comput Surv 46(2):1–40. https://doi.org/10.1145/2543581.2543590
Scarfe P, Glennerster A (2019) The science behind virtual reality displays. Annu Rev vis Sci 5:529–547. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-vision-091718-014942
Schwind V, Leusmann J, Hanze N (2019) Understanding visual-haptic integration of avatar hands using a Fitts’ law task in virtual reality. In: Proceedings of mensch und computer 2019, pp 211–222. https://doi.org/10.1145/3340764.3340769
Soukoreff RW, MacKenzie IS (2004) Towards a standard for pointing device evaluation, perspectives on 27 years of Fitts’ law research in HCI. Int J Hum Comput Stud 61:751–789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2004.09.001
Teather RJ, Stuerzlinger W (2010) Target pointing in 3D user interfaces. Poster at Graphics Interface.
Teather RJ, Stuerzlinger W (2011) Pointing at 3D targets in a stereo head-tracked virtual environment. In: IEEE symposium on 3D user interfaces, pp 87–94. https://doi.org/10.1109/3DUI.2011.5759222
Warton DI, Hui FKC (2011) The arcsine is asinine: the analysis of proportions in ecology. Ecology 92:3–10. https://doi.org/10.1890/10-0340.1
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by ARC Discovery project grant DP190100533 (to GW) and ARC Linkage Grant LP180100377 (Industry Partner: Boeing) (to GW).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interests.
Ethical approval
The experiment was approved by the University of Queensland Health and Behavioural Sciences Low and Negligible Risk Ethics Sub-Committee. Participants gave informed consent to participate and for their anonymous results to be published.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
McAnally, K., Wallwork, K. & Wallis, G. The efficiency of visually guided movement in real and virtual space. Virtual Reality 27, 1187–1197 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-022-00724-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-022-00724-5