An Evaluation of Methods for Manipulating Virtual Objects at Different Scales

Abstract

Immersive Virtual Reality enables users to experience 3D models and other virtual content in ways that cannot be achieved on a flat screen, and several modern Virtual Reality applications now give users the ability to include or create their own content and objects. With user-generated content however, objects may come in all shapes and sizes. This necessitates the use of object manipulation methods that are effective regardless of object size. In this work we evaluate two methods for manipulating virtual objects of varying sizes. World Pull enables the user to directly manipulate and scale the virtual environment, while Pivot Manipulation enables the user to rotate objects around a set of predefined pivot points. The methods were compared to a traditional 6 degree of freedom manipulation method during a user study and the results showed that World Pull performed better in terms of precision for small and large objects, while Pivot Manipulation performed better for large objects.