Interacting with molecular structures: user performance versus system complexity
Robert van Liere, J. B. O. S. Martens, Arjan J. F. Kok, M. van Tienen · 2005
Effective interaction in a virtual environment requires that the user can adequately judge the spatial relationships between the objects in a 3D scene. In order to accomplish adequate depth perception, existing virtual environ-ments create useful perceptual cues through stereoscopy, motion parallax and (active or passive) haptic feedback. Specic hardware, such as high-end monitors with stereoscopic glasses, head-mounted tracking and mirrors are required to accomplish this. Many potential VR users however refuse to wear cumbersome devices and to adjust to an imposed work environment, especially for longer periods of time. It is therefore important to quantify the repercussions of dropping one or more of the above technologies. These repercussions are likely to depend on the application area, so that comparisons should be performed on tasks that are important and/or occur frequently in the application eld of interest. In this paper, we report on a formal experiment in which the effects of different hardware components on the speed and accuracy of three-dimensional (3D) interaction tasks are established. The tasks that have been selected for the experiment are inspired by interactions and complexities, as they typically occur when exploring molecular structures. From the experimental data, we develop linear regression models to predict the speed and accuracy of the interaction tasks. Our ndings show that hardware supported depth cues have a signicant positive effect