A study on the role of feedback and interface modalities for natural interaction in virtual reality environments

This paper investigates how people interact in immersive virtual reality environments, during selection and manipulation tasks in different conditions. We take into consideration two different task complexities, two interaction modalities (i.e. HTC Vive Controller and Leap Motion) and three feedback provided to the user (i.e. none, audio and visual) with the aim of understanding their influence on performances and preferences. Although adding feedback to the touchless interface may help users to overcome instability problems, providing information about the objects state, i.e. grabbed or released, they do not substantially improve performances. Moreover, both touchful and touchless modalities have been shown to be effective for interaction. The analysis presented in this paper may play a role in the design of natural and ecological interfaces, especially in the case non-invasive devices are needed.