Towards Better Throwing: A Comparison of Performance and Preferences Across Point of Release Mechanics in Virtual Reality
Authors: 
Amirpouya Ghasemaghaei, Mykola Maslych, Yahya Hmaiti, Esteban Segarra Martinez, Joseph J. LaViolaAuthors Info & Claims
Amirpouya Ghasemaghaei, Mykola Maslych, Yahya Hmaiti, Esteban Segarra Martinez, Joseph J. LaViolaAuthors Info & ClaimsArticle No.: 26, Pages 1 - 11
Abstract
An underexplored interaction metaphor in virtual reality (VR) is throwing, with a considerable challenge in achieving accurate and natural results. We conducted an empirical investigation of participants’ performance in a VR throwing task, measuring their accuracy and preferences across Point of Release (PoR) mechanics (manual and automatic) with various input device categories (hand-held, on-body, external) and throwable object types. Participants were tasked with throwing a baseball, a bowling ball, and a football toward targets using 5 input configurations (2 manual and 3 automatic PoR). Results from 30 participants indicate that the overall highest accuracy was achieved with an automatic PoR configuration (on-body tracker). The post-study and VR survey results indicate that the majority of participants preferred a manual PoR configuration (hand-held VR controller-derived) for the throwing direction, throwing speed, and as being the closest to real-life throwing. Our findings are useful for VR researchers and developers who want to implement throwing as a technique in their applications.
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Index Terms
- Towards Better Throwing: A Comparison of Performance and Preferences Across Point of Release Mechanics in Virtual Reality
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June 2024
437 pages
ISBN:9798400718281
DOI:10.1145/3670947
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