Evaluation of a Collaborative Movement Task in a Distributed Three-dimensional Virtual Environment

A task designed to estimate the impact of communication channel performance on individual and collaborative human performance in distributed, shared, virtual environments was evaluated. The ‘Fitts-like’ task required participants to press buttons as fast as they could in a three-dimensional virtual workspace. In addition, in the collaborative task the 2 participants were required to press the buttons simultaneously. The size of the buttons, the distance between buttons, and the delay between movement and visual feedback were manipulated. The results were well described by Fitts’ law. Movement Time increased with increases in Index of Difficulty and delay. The Index of Performance decreased with delay and was lower in the collaborative task. Overall, orderly changes in performance were observed with manipulation of task parameters, suggesting that future studies to examine more complicated manipulations of network performance and multisensory displays are appropriate.