Pointing Techniques for Distant Targets in Virtual Reality

Raycasting is the most common target pointing technique in virtual reality environments. However, performance on small and distant targets is impacted by the accuracy of the pointing device and the user's motor skills. Current pointing facilitation techniques are currently only applied in the context of the virtual hand, i.e. for targets within reach. We propose to add a cursor on the ray, controlled by the user. This allows target pointing techniques by proximity to be applied, such as the Bubble Cursor. We describe a study comparing several visual feedbacks for this technique. Our results show that just highlighting the nearest target reduces the selection time by 14.8% and the error rate by 82.6% compared to Raycasting in the general case. For small targets, the selection time is reduced by 25.7% and the error rate by 90.8%.