Sliding Viewport for Interactive Virtual Environments

The ability to manipulate objects is fundamental to most virtual reality (VR) applications. A multitude of metaphors have been developed to facilitate object selection and manipulation [1], including virtual hand [2], which remains by far the most popular technique in this category. The utility of the virtual hand depends on the user’s ability to see it. Unfortunately, ensuring this is not always easy, especially in immersive systems which employ head mounted displays (HMD) with a limited field of view. Building on [3], we show how the virtual hand metaphor may be used effectively both to manipulate virtual objects, and to guide the user’s view in order to ensure continuous visibility of the hand. We provide implementation detail and report experimental results from the user studies. This paper is intended for an audience interested in building HMD-based VR systems, where users are required to actively interact with the environment by using their virtual hand.