Toward Intuitive Acquisition of Occluded VR Objects Through an Interactive Disocclusion Mini-map

• Published in: Proceedings (IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces. Online) pp. 460 - 470
• Main Authors: Maslych, Mykola, Hmaiti, Yahya, Ghamandi, Ryan, Leber, Paige, Kattoju, Ravi Kiran, Belga, Jacob, LaViola, Joseph J.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.03.2023
• Subjects: Casting; Grasping; head mounted displays; Maintenance engineering; mini map; object selection; occlusion; Three-dimensional displays; User interfaces; user studies; Virtual reality; Visualization
• ISSN: 2642-5254
• DOI: 10.1109/VR55154.2023.00061

Standard selection techniques such as ray casting fail when virtual objects are partially or fully occluded. In this paper, we present two novel approaches that combine cone-casting, world-in-miniature, and grasping metaphors to disocclude objects in the representation local to the user. Through a within-subject study where we compared 4 selection techniques across 3 levels of object occlusion, we found that our techniques outperformed an alternative one that also focuses on maintaining the spatial relationships between objects. We discuss application scenarios and future research directions for these types of selection techniques.