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PinchLens: Applying Spatial Magnification and Adaptive Control-Display Gain for Precise Selection in Virtual Reality

  • Fengyuan Zhu
  • , Ludwig Sidenmark
  • , Mauricio Sousa
  • , Tovi Grossman

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

We present PinchLens, a new free-hand target selection technique for acquiring small and dense targets in Virtual Reality. Traditional pinch-based selection does not allow people to precisely manipulate small and dense objects effectively due to tracking and perceptual inaccuracies. Our approach combines spatial magnification, an adaptive control-display gain, and visual feedback to improve selection accuracy. When a user starts the pinching selection process, a magnifying bubble expands the scale of nearby targets, an adaptive control-to-display ratio is applied to the user's hand for precision, and a cursor is displayed at the estimated pinch point for enhanced visual feedback. We performed a user study to compare our technique to traditional pinch selection and several variations to isolate the impact of each of the technique's features. The results showed that PinchLens significantly outperformed traditional pinch selection, reducing error rates from 18.9% to 1.9%. Furthermore, we found that magnification was the dominant feature to produce this improvement, while the adaptive control-display gain and visual cursor of pinch were also helpful in several conditions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR 2023
EditorsGerd Bruder, Anne-Helene Olivier, Andrew Cunningham, Evan Yifan Peng, Jens Grubert, Ian Williams
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1221-1230
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9798350328387
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Externally publishedYes
Event22nd IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR 2023 - Sydney, Australia
Duration: 2023 Oct 162023 Oct 20

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR 2023

Conference

Conference22nd IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ISMAR 2023
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CitySydney
Period23/10/1623/10/20

Keywords

  • Human computer interaction (HCI)
  • Human-centered computing
  • Interaction techniques

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Media Technology
  • Modelling and Simulation

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