Oculus Rift Versus HTC Vive: Usability Assessment from a Teleportation Task

Virtual Reality (VR) technology has shown impressive growth in recent years, extending to industrial, military, and rehabilitation occupations. However, despite such growth, there is little research on the usability aspects associated with different VR devices. This paper investigates subjective and objective usability differences between two commercial Head-Mounted Display (HMD) systems, the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, using a between-subjects experimental design on three teleportation task scenarios. Each scenario had a time limit of five minutes and sequentially increased in complexity. Objective usability was evaluated through performance measures, including per scenario effectiveness, time duration, total time duration, completion rate, and time-based efficiency. Subjective usability was evaluated by users after the three scenarios, via a questionnaire formed of ease of use, comfort, effectiveness, and visual quality subscales. The results, interpreted using Mann-Whitney U Tests, indicated significant differences between the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift: in terms of objective usability, Vive's overmatch in scenario three effectiveness suggests harder tasks in the Rift may require additional aids; in terms of subjective usability, Vive's overmatch in effectiveness questionnaire items suggests it is a preferred choice for a range of applications, as well as for learning real-world skills. In terms of significant Spearman's rho correlations, more HMD comfort is aligned with completion rates, within the Vive; different contexts may lead to a reversal effect, where visual quality can either relate to negative or positive performance, depending on the headset; and overall, many different usability aspects positively relate to total time-based efficiency of the teleportation task.