Virtual vs. Real-World Pointing

Abstract

Users are discussing collisions of a windshield wiper joint in a two-user projection system for collaborative assembly simulations.

We are investigating the utility of a projection-based stereoscopic two-user system for applications in the automotive industry. In this paper we compare real-world pointing to pointing at virtual objects in a two-user scenario. In our study we investigated the following situation: One user points at an object while the second person has to guess the referenced object. Our results indicate that pointing at objects in a virtual world is much less precise than pointing in the real world even for a well calibrated stereoscopic two-user system. Pointing techniques like outlining an object or pointing from a distance produce more errors than the corresponding real-world techniques, but they are less error prone than interactions requiring to touch a virtual object. Our findings are a first step to qualify direct interaction techniques in a multi-user projection-based system.

Papers and Documents

Salzmann, H., Moehring, M., Froehlich, B.
Virtual vs. Real-World Pointing in Two-User Scenarios (Best Sketch / Short Paper Award)
IEEE Virtual Reality Conference (IEEE VR 2009), pp. 127-130, March 2009.
[preprint]