Effects of hand feedback fidelity on near space pointing performance and user acceptance

In this paper, we report on an experiment conducted to test the effects of different hand representations on near space pointing performance and user preference. Subjects were presented with varying levels of hand realism, including real hand video, a high and a low level 3D hand model and an ordinary 3D pointer arrow. Behavioural data revealed that an abstract hand substitute like a 3D pointer arrow leads to significantly larger position estimation errors in terms of lateral target overshooting when touching virtual surfaces with only visual hand movement constraints. Further, questionnaire results show that a higher fidelity hand is preferred over lower fidelity representations for different aspects of the task. But we cannot conclude that realtime video feedback of the own hand is better rated than a high level static 3D hand model. Overall, these results, which largely confirm previous research, suggest that, although a higher fidelity feedback of the hand is desirable from an user acceptance point of view, motor performance seems not to be affected by varying degrees of limb realism - as long as a hand-like shape is provided.