Separating the effects of level of immersion and 3D interaction techniques

Abstract

Empirical evidence of the benefits of immersion is an important goal for the virtual environment (VE) community. Direct comparison of immersive systems and non-immersive systems is insufficient because differences between such systems may be due not only to the level of immersion, but also to other factors, such as the input devices and interaction techniques used. In this paper, a study is presented that separates the effects of level of immersion and 3D interaction technique for a six-degree-of-freedom manipulation task. In the study, two components of immersion -- stereoscopy and field of regard -- were varied and three 3D interaction techniques -- HOMER, Go-Go, and DO-IT (a new keyboard- and mouse-based technique) -- were tested. The results of the experiment show that the interaction technique had a significant effect on object manipulation time, while the two components of immersion did not. The implications of these results are discussed for VE application developers.