Interaction: Full and Partial Immersive Virtual Reality Displays

Full and partial immersion in virtual reality are fundamental different user experiences: partial immersion supports the feeling of “looking at” a virtual environment while full immersion supports the feeling of “being in” that environment (Shneiderman 1998:221-222). Working with a range of different interactive virtual reality applications using different display systems we have found that the use of six-sided caves and panoramic displays result in different requirements to the design of interaction techniques and use of interaction devices. These requirements can be closely related to specific categories of interaction: orientating, moving and acting. We also found, that existing virtual reality applications often have very little in common when it comes to interaction techniques and does not take into consideration the implications of the display type used. In this paper I present a conceptual framework for the design of interaction techniques for virtual reality focusing on the relations between interaction techniques and display types.