Quick Porting of Virtual Simulation Experiment Interactions from the Web 3D to VR

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology is developing rapidly, and many 3D virtual simulation experiments on the web can be quickly ported to the VR environment to enhance user experience. The manner of interacting with a quickly ported two-dimensional user interface (2DUI) is a matter of preference. In this study, we focused on finding a more effective interaction scheme when a web 3D virtual simulation experiment is ported into the VR environment. When the development time is short, ray interaction and touch interaction can be easily and quickly ported while retaining the 2DUI of the original web-side experiment. We selected the architecture optics virtual simulation experiment for porting, divided the interactions into two levels, namely, L1 ray and L2 touch interactions, and recruited 30 volunteers to participate in the experiment in groups. The efficiency and user experience of L1 and L2 were compared by designing interactive tasks and collecting data. Overall, L1 was more efficient than L2. For the four common user interfaces, buttons, sliders, toggles, and dropdowns, L2 was only slightly better at interacting with the dropdown boxes than L1. However, both were slower than the web interface. L2 also received higher workload scores, based on user feedback and workload surveys. We also designed an interaction level, L3, for VR with reference to Worlds in Miniature and compared it with L1/L2/web by using the same interaction tasks. L3 was as efficient as the web. Finally, based on the experimental results, we provide suggestions for quick porting development.