Portallite: A Bare-Hand 3-D Portal Creation and Manipulation Technique for Remote Object Interactions in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Interaction with objects beyond an arm’s reach is a challenging task in virtual reality (VR). Ray-casting is often used to solve this problem, but it still has limitations when targeting areas that the ray cannot reach. To address this issue, the concept of a portal, which allows close access to a distant area, has been investigated. In this study, we introduce Portallite, an interaction technique that allows users to easily create and control 3D portals. We offer a world-in-miniature map with satellites above it as a metaphorical representation, where the position and height of the satellites represent the location and size of portals in a virtual environment. Users are able to interact with the interaction proxies, a map and satellites, using their hands. This interaction metaphor allows them to exploit the spatial relationship between the map and satellites through vision and proprioception. We conduct a user study to evaluate Portallite for portal creation and subsequent object manipulation tasks in comparison with other bare-hand interaction techniques for 3D portals. The results demonstrate that Portallite offers advantages in terms of speed, accuracy, and reduced cognitive workload.

Minha Jeon

Master’s Student

Seungjae Oh

Assistant Professor

My research interests include interactive I/O technologies, Haptics, and game interaction techniques.