Physical surfaces make touch interactions in virtual reality precise, efficient, and bimanual
For VR users and designers, this work demonstrates that physical surfaces enhance precision and efficiency in high-precision tasks, providing a practical solution to the lack of haptic grounding in mid-air interactions.
The paper investigates how different types of haptic feedback affect touch interaction performance in VR, finding that portable physical surfaces significantly improve selection precision, tracing efficiency, and sketch quality, and increase bimanual hand utilization compared to no haptic feedback or tactile feedback alone.
Virtual reality (VR) systems can enable convenient hand-based interactions across diverse work scenarios. However, mid-air gestures lack tactile feedback and a physical reference surface to support the hand. This absence of haptic grounding can cause significant challenges in achieving precise and efficient touch interactions. This paper investigates the effect of different types of hand-grounded haptic feedback on the touch performance of VR tasks that demand high precision, such as selecting, tracing, and sketching. We compared three levels of haptic feedback: 1) No Haptic Feedback, where only visual feedback was provided; 2) Tactile Feedback, where users received vibrotactile and pressure feedback upon touching a virtual surface; 3) Physical Surface, where users interacted with a portable and tangible surface. Our study found that portable physical surfaces enabled the best selection precision, tracing efficiency, and sketch quality. Furthermore, participants showed increased bimanual hand utilization when engaging with a physical surface during tasks. These observed behaviors corresponded to participants' preference for interacting with physical surfaces, attributed to a better sense of confidence and control.