Effects of Orientation Disparity Between Haptic and Graphic Displays of Objects in Virtual Environments

Spatial disparity between a physical object and its visual presentation is very common in virtual environments. An experiment was conducted to systematically investigate the effects of orientation disparity between haptic and graphic displays of objects on human performance in a virtual environment. It was found that human performance was optimum with no orientation disparity. Orientation disparity had significant effects on the object orientation component, but did not appear to affect the object transportation component of human movements. It appeared that, when the orientation disparity was present, the orientation speed relied more on the haptic display of objects while the orientation accuracy depended more on the graphic display of objects. Implications for human-computer interface design were also discussed.