Learning Effect of Lay People in Gesture-Based Locomotion in Virtual Reality

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quickly users adapt to gesture-based locomotion in VR, highlighting the importance of considering learning effects in evaluating such systems.

Contribution

It introduces a study on user learning effects in gesture-based VR locomotion, emphasizing the need to account for adaptation in research evaluations.

Findings

Users adapt to gesture-based locomotion within a short period

Four different gesture techniques were tested with positive adaptation results

The study encourages future research to include learning effects in evaluations

Abstract

Locomotion in Virtual Reality (VR) is an important part of VR applications. Many scientists are enriching the community with different variations that enable locomotion in VR. Some of the most promising methods are gesture-based and do not require additional handheld hardware. Recent work focused mostly on user preference and performance of the different locomotion techniques. This ignores the learning effect that users go through while new methods are being explored. In this work, it is investigated whether and how quickly users can adapt to a hand gesture-based locomotion system in VR. Four different locomotion techniques are implemented and tested by participants. The goal of this paper is twofold: First, it aims to encourage researchers to consider the learning effect in their studies. Second, this study aims to provide insight into the learning effect of users in gesture-based systems.