Abstracts Category : Other

Input and Display of Text for Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays and Hand-held Positionally Tracked Controllers

by Jakob Olofsson

The recent increase of affordable virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays has led to many new video games and applications being developed for virtual reality environments. The improvements to VR technology has introduced many new possibilities, but has also introduced new problems to solve in order to make VR software as comfortable and as effective as possible. In this report, different methods of displaying text and receiving text input in VR environments are investigated and measured. An interactive user study was conducted to evaluate and compare the performance and user opinion of three different text display methods and four separate virtual keyboard solutions. Results revealed that the distance between text and user, with the same relative text size, significantly affected the ease of reading the text, and that designing a good virtual keyboard for VR requires a good balance of multiple factors. An example of such factors is the balance between precise control and the amount of physical exertion required. Additionally, the results suggest that the amount of previous experience with virtual reality equipment, and typing skill with regular physical keyboards, can meaningfully impact which solution is most appropriate. Den senaste tidens kning av prisvrda virtual reality (VR) glasgon har lett till en kning av spel och applikationer som utvecklas fr virtual reality miljer. Frbttringarna av VR tekniken har introducerat mnga nya mjligheter, men ven nya problem att lsa fr att skapa VR mjukvara som r s bekvm och effektiv som mjligt. I den hr rapporten undersks och mts olika metoder fr att visa samt ta emot text i VR miljer. Detta undersktes genom utfrandet av en interaktiv anvndarstudie som utvrderade och jmfrde effektiviteten och anvndarsikter kring tre olika metoder fr att visa text samt fyra olika virtuella tangentbordslsningar. Resultatet visade att avstndet mellan anvndaren och texten, med samma relativa textstorlek, avsevrt pverkade lttheten att lsa texten, samt att designen av ett bra virtuellt tangentbord fr VR krver en bra balans mellan flera faktorer. Ett exempel p sdana faktorer r balansen mellan noggrann kontroll och den fysiska anstrngning som krvs. Resultatet tyder ven p att mngden av tidigare erfarenhet med virtual reality utrustning samt skicklighet att skriva med vanliga fysiska tangentbord betydligt kan pverka vilka lsningar som r mest passande fr situationen.