An Evaluation of the Effects of Hyper-Natural Components of Interaction Fidelity on Locomotion Performance in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) locomotion techniques that approximate real-world walking often have lower performance than fully natural real walking due to moderate interaction fidelity. Other techniques with moderate fidelity, however, are intentionally designed to enhance users' abilities beyond what is possible in the real world. We compared such hyper-natural techniques to their natural counterparts on a wide range of locomotion tasks for a variety of measures. The evaluation also considered two independent components of interaction fidelity: bio-mechanics and transfer function. The results show that hyper-natural transfer functions can improve locomotion speed and some aspects of user satis-faction, although this can come at the expense of accuracy for complicated path-following tasks. On the other hand, hyper-natural techniques designed to provide biomechanical assistance had lower performance and user acceptance than those based on natural walking movements. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the effects of interaction fidelity and designer intent for VR interaction techniques.