Short Paper: Comparing Virtual Trajectories Made in Slalom UsingWalking-In-Place and Joystick Techniques

Abstract

In this paper we analyze and compare the trajectories made in a Virtual Environment with two different navigation techniques. The first is a standard joystick technique and the second is the Walking-In-Place (WIP) technique. We propose a spatial and temporal analysis of the trajectories produced with both techniques during a virtual slalom task. We found that trajectories and users' behaviors are very different accross the two conditions. Our results notably show that with the WIP technique the users turned more often and navigated more sequentially, i.e. waited to cross obstacles before changing their direction. However, the users were also able to modulate their speed more precisely with the WIP. These results could be used to optimize the design and future implementations of WIP techniques. Our analysis could also become the basis of a future framework to compare other navigation techniques.