Effects of Tracking Technology, Latency, and Spatial Jitter on Object Movement

We investigate the effects of input device latency and spatial jitter on 2D pointing tasks and 3D object movement tasks. First, we characterize jitter and latency in a 3D tracking device and an optical mouse used as a baseline comparison. We then present an experiment based on ISO 9241-9, which measures performance characteristics of pointing devices. We artificially introduce latency and jitter to the mouse and compared the results to the 3D tracker. Results indicate that latency has a much stronger effect on human performance than low amounts of spatial jitter. In a second study, we use a subset of conditions from the first to test latency and jitter on 3D object movement. The results indicate that large, uncharacterized jitter "spikes" significantly impact 3D performance.