Comparing Virtual Trajectories Made in Slalom Using Walking-In-Place and Joystick Techniques

Léo Terziman (1) , Maud Marchal (1) , Franck Multon (2, 3) , Bruno Arnaldi (1) , Anatole Lécuyer (1)

1 VR4I - Virtual Reality for Improved Innovative Immersive Interaction
2 MIMETIC - Analysis-Synthesis Approach for Virtual Human Simulation
3 M2S - Laboratoire Mouvement Sport Santé

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.

Domaines: Synthèse d'image et réalité virtuelle [cs.GR]

Léo Terziman, Maud Marchal, Franck Multon, Bruno Arnaldi, Anatole Lécuyer. Comparing Virtual Trajectories Made in Slalom Using Walking-In-Place and Joystick Techniques. EuroVR / EGVE Joint Virtual Reality Conference, Sep 2011, Nottingham, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-00641371⟩