Is semitransparency useful for navigating virtual environments?

Chittaro, Luca; Scagnetto, Ivan

doi:10.1145/505008.505039

Cited by 24 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…In the case of completion time and the total score, the improvements relative to the baseline teleport were statistically significant. These results are consistent with the results of the study done by Chittaro and Scagnetto (2001) who evaluated navigating indoor VEs using a desktop-VR setting and found that making the walls semi-transparent significantly improved the navigation performance. The X-Ray Vision performed equally well with regards to the subjective measures.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

An empirical evaluation of enhanced teleportation for navigating large urban immersive virtual environments

Badr

Amicis

2023

Front. Virtual Real.

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Navigation is the most prevalent interaction in large urban virtual environments (VEs). Any Metaverse application that foresees navigating or exploring virtual cities requires an effective and efficient navigation technique. These environments, however, have distinct characteristics that make the navigation more challenging and the design of the interactions more critical. We have conducted an empirical study to assess how enhancing the teleportation technique with additional capabilities affects the performance of navigating large urban VEs. For this purpose, three interactions have been developed that extend the conventional point-and-click teleportation. The first one is named Mini-Map and provides a top-down view of the user’s surroundings. Portal Preview provides a preview of the selected target location and allows users to choose their desired orientation at that location. The last technique, called X-Ray Vision, makes the buildings around the user translucent and allows teleporting to locations that would otherwise be obscured. A within-subject controlled lab study with twenty five participants has been conducted, where each extension is evaluated individually as well as in combination with others. Our results show that extending the teleportation can significantly improve its performance when navigating large urban VEs. Overall, the X-Ray Vision was the most successful extension with respect to both task metrics and usability measures. Mini-Map was able to improve some of the task metrics, but did not have a significant effect on most self-reported measures. Portal Preview was the least effective extension, however, multiple participants liked the fact that they could define their desired orientation with the controller. Combining all interactions together performed well with respect to the task metrics, but this option was not favored by the participants. Extending the teleportation with X-Ray Vision and Mini-Map was by far the most favored option.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

An empirical evaluation of enhanced teleportation for navigating large urban immersive virtual environments

Badr

Amicis

2023

Front. Virtual Real.

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“…The 'Worldlets' technique of Elvins et al (1998) uses a similar approach except that there is no overlap with the presented environmentWorldlets are 3D interactive thumbnails displayed outside the environment. Chittaro and Scagnetto (2001) found 'semitransparency', where users are able to see through occluded surfaces within the VE, to be a useful navigation aid.…”

Section: Navigation In Virtual Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Desktop virtual environments: a study of navigation and age

Sayers

2004

Interacting with Computers

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Navigation in virtual environments on desktop systems is known to be problematic. Research into the usability of the tools presented on two-dimensional interfaces indicates that, for even relatively simple tasks, users experience some degree of frustration. As the user community broadens with an increasing range of applications and services making use of three-dimensional presentation, the usability of these interfaces becomes ever more important. In this paper, we describe the results of an experiment performed to evaluate the usability of a number of visual navigation tools and the effect for two age groups (18-45 and 46 þ ). Results indicate that, for both age groups, the visual presentation of navigational aids improves navigation performance in terms of both time taken to complete tasks, and user satisfaction with the system. In all experimental conditions younger participants achieved better performance times, although the gap between the groups decreased when a choice of navigation aids was presented. q

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“…To study wayfinding aids, the authors of the papers referenced here typically compare the performance of the users on some task with different wayfinding aids. Typically the task involves: searching for a target object [EH97, RCvD97, EF08, WZHZ09, finding a number of targets in a specified order [CB04,BC07], exploring the space, finding the target, and returning to the starting point [DS93], finding a path to a specific object [CS01,CV06], direction estimation [CV06], learning the environment and, for example, sketching its map [DS96, RM99 or placing target objects on the map [BKH98, ETT08].…”

Section: Studies Of Wayfinding Aidsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances in Interaction with 3D Environments

Jankowski

Hachet

2014

Computer Graphics Forum

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Various interaction techniques have been developed for interactive 3D environments. This paper presents an up‐to‐date and comprehensive review of the state of the art of non‐immersive interaction techniques for Navigation, Selection & Manipulation, and System Control, including a basic introduction to the topic, the challenges and an examination of a number of popular approaches. We also introduce 3D Interaction Testbed (3DIT) to firstly allow a ‘hands‐on' understanding of 3D interaction principles, and secondly to create an open platform for defining evaluation methods, stimuli as well as representative tasks akin to those found in other disciplines of science. We hope that this survey can aid both researchers and developers of interactive 3D applications in having a clearer overview of the topic and in particular can be useful for practitioners and researchers that are new to the field of interactive 3D graphics.

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Is semitransparency useful for navigating virtual environments?

Cited by 24 publications

References 27 publications

An empirical evaluation of enhanced teleportation for navigating large urban immersive virtual environments

An empirical evaluation of enhanced teleportation for navigating large urban immersive virtual environments

Desktop virtual environments: a study of navigation and age

Advances in Interaction with 3D Environments

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