Comparing two input devices for virtual walkthroughs using a Head Mounted Display (HMD)
Beatriz Sousa Santos, Paulo Dias, Paulo Santos, Carlos Manuel dos Santos Ferreira · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2014
Selecting input and output devices to be used in virtual walkthroughs is an important issue as it may have significant impact in usability and comfort. This paper presents a user study meant to compare the usability of two input devices used for walkthroughs in a virtual environment with a Head-Mounted Display. User performance, satisfaction, ease of use and comfort, were compared with two different input devices: a two button mouse and a joystick from a gamepad. Participants also used a desktop to perform the same tasks in order to assess if the participant groups had similar profiles. The results obtained by 45 participants suggest that both input devices have a comparable usability in the used conditions and show that participants generally performed better with the desktop; a discussion of possible causes is presented.