A methodology for the evaluation of travel techniques for immersive virtual environments

An example experiment is presented, which evaluates the user's ability to gather information while travelling through a virtual environment, and results indicate that, of the variables tested, the complexity of the environment is by far the most important factor.

Abstract

We present a framework for the analysis and evaluation oftravel, or viewpoint motion control, techniques for use in immersive virtual environments (VEs). In previous work, we presented a taxonomy of travel techniques and a set of experiments mapping parts of the taxonomy to various performance metrics. Since these initial experiments, we have expanded the framework to allow evaluation of not only the effects of different travel techniques, but also the effects of many outside factors simultaneously. Combining this expanded framework with the measurement of multiple response variables epitomises the philosophy oftestbed evaluation. This experimental philosophy leads to a deeper understanding of the interaction and the technique(s) in question, as well as to broadly generalisable results. We also present an example experiment within this expanded framework, which evaluates the user's ability to gather information while travelling through a virtual environment. Results indicate that, of the variables tested, the complexity of the environment is by far the most important factor.