Testbed evaluation of navigation and text display techniques in an information-rich virtual environment

Abstract

The fundamental question for an information-rich virtual environment is how to access and display abstract information. We investigated two existing navigation techniques:Hand-Centered Object Manipulation Extending Ray-casting (HOMER) and Go-Go navigation, and two text layout techniques: within-the-world display (WWD) and heads-up display (HUD). Four search tasks were performed to measure participants' performance in a densely packed environment. HUD enabled significantly better performance than WWD and the Go-Go technique enabled better performance than the HOMER technique for most of the tasks. We found that using HOMER navigation combined with the WWD technique was significantly worse than other combinations for difficult naïve search tasks. Users also preferred the combination of Go-Go and HUD for all tasks.

Reading in VR: The Effect of Text Presentation Type and Location

“…A few studies investigated the position of text in virtual environments. In a study, Chen et al [6] investigated within-the-world display (WWD) and head-up display (HUD) text layouts while using them with two navigation techniques for search tasks. The results showed that with HUD, participants' performance was higher than with the WWD.…”

“…Chen et al [6] developed a taxonomy for text layouts in VR by classifying text presentation techniques using the dimensions visual attributes, location, and embedded text quantity. Several researchers provided design recommendations for visual attributes of text, such as font type, font size, text drawing styles, and background color [9,20].…”

“…Regarding the orientation, a text can also be static in a virtual environment or dynamically rotate always to face the user. One of the commonly used text locations both in VR and augmented reality (AR) applications is the head-up display (HUD) location [6,21,32,33]. In this case, a text is displayed at the same position in the user's feld of view despite their movements.…”

“…Based on text layout taxonomy [6], the text quantity can be low (e.g., a label with a few words), medium (e.g., a brief description of a virtual object) and high (e.g., a detailed description of a virtual object). Text in VR can change its presentation form to display the same amount of text in diferent display sizes.…”

Empirical Evaluation of Smartphone Augmented Reality Browsers in an Urban Tourism Destination Context

“…Bell et al, 2001), Information Rich Virtual Environments (IRVEs) (e.g. Chen & Bowman, 2004), Information Visualization and Cartography (e.g. Hartmann et al, 2005):…”