Flight simulators with a physical mock-up are dependent on the aircraft type and have high costs. In order to overcome high cost issues, a generic virtual reality flight simulator is designed. Virtual buttons are used without a physical mock-up to make the virtual reality flight simulator independent of the aircraft type. The classic virtual hand metaphor is employed to interact with the virtual objects. This paper examines the virtual hand-button interaction in the generic virtual reality flight simulator where no haptic feed-back is provided. The effect of the collision volume of a virtual button during the virtual hand-button interaction is determined. It is concluded that a change in the collision volume within aircraft design limits, does not have a significant impact on the interaction. We also investigate different virtual hand avatars. We find that the accuracy of hand-button interaction depends on the hand avatar rather than the collision volume. Representing a smaller part of the hand avatar results in less efficient interaction. This shows the size and shape of hand avatars plays a major role in the virtual reality simulator design. This finding contributes to the various virtual reality applications which exploit the virtual hand metaphor.
Visuo-haptic augmented reality systems enable users to see and touch digital information that is embedded in the real world. PHANToM haptic devices are often employed to provide haptic feedback. Precise co-location of computer-generated graphics and the haptic stylus is necessary to provide a realistic user experience. Previous work has focused on calibration procedures that compensate the non-linear position error caused by inaccuracies in the joint angle sensors. In this article we present a more complete procedure that additionally compensates for errors in the gimbal sensors and improves position calibration. The proposed procedure further includes software-based temporal alignment of sensor data and a method for the estimation of a reference for position calibration, resulting in increased robustness against haptic device initialization and external tracker noise. We designed our procedure to require minimal user input to maximize usability. We conducted an extensive evaluation with two different PHANToMs, two different optical trackers, and a mechanical tracker. Compared to state-of-the-art calibration procedures, our approach significantly improves the co-location of the haptic stylus. This results in higher fidelity visual and haptic augmentations, which are crucial for fine-motor tasks in areas such as medical training simulators, assembly planning tools, or rapid prototyping applications.
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