Evaluation of 3D virtual cursor offset techniques for navigation tasks in a multi-display virtual environment

Extending the position of a 3D virtual cursor that represents the location of a physical tracking input device in the virtual world often enhances efficiency and usability of 3D user interactions. Most previous studies, however, tend to focus on evaluating cursor offset techniques for specific types of interactions, mainly object selection and manipulation. Furthermore, not many studies address cursor offset techniques for multi-display virtual environments, such as a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE), which require different directions of the cursor offset for different displays. This paper presents two formal user studies that evaluate effects of varying offset techniques on navigation tasks in a CAVE system. The first study compares four offset techniques: no offset, fixed-length offset, nonlinear offset and linear offset. The results indicate that the linear offset technique outperforms other techniques for exocentric travel tasks. The second study investigates the influence of three different offset lengths in the linear offset technique on the same task.