Investigating the Benefits of Haptic Feedback During In-Car Interactions in Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) offers many advantages within the product development process. One of the most valuable is the opportunity to test, visualize and evaluate virtual concepts and prototypes in an early state of the development process. Furthermore, components like usability and user experience can be tested and evaluated faster and with more iterations before a physical prototype is set up. One factor to measure the quality of a virtual environment is the feeling of presence. A high feeling of presence will lead to realistic responses from the user. Contradictory, a lack of realistic sensory perception will lower the feeling of presence and will therefore influence usability and user experience ratings. Hence, haptic feedback is indispensable for virtual user evaluations. The present study focused on a novel glove for tactile and force feedback from the company HaptX. In this study forty-five participants interacted with a virtual car interior in two conditions: high sophisticated visual feedback and visuo-haptic feedback. The subjects used different types of car controls like buttons, levers or rotary switches. After each condition, the participants answered questionnaires with items regarding realism, grasping behavior and feedback quality. The results show that visuo-haptic feedback brings important advantages to virtual interactions even when there is a highly sophisticated visual feedback. Participants were able to recognize interactions much faster and precisely with visuo-haptic feedback. However, the rating of realism failed to reach significance. The results highlight the importance of haptic feedback for interactions within virtual environments. In general, this novel method for haptic feedback improves the interaction with a virtual car interior, even when using a highly sophisticated visual feedback.