Virtual ball catching performance in different camera views

Virtual camera design is an important but tricky part of creating virtual reality experiences; interaction can feel awkward if the camera is not placed exactly at the user's eyes, but on the other hand a 3rd person perspective (3PP) can provide a better view of the environment and/or the avatar. To inform camera design, we contribute the first study that systematically explores and quantifies how interaction difficulty changes when the camera is moved between a natural 1st person perspective (1PP) and a typical 3PP where the camera is behind and above the user. In our experiment, 24 participants catched flying virtual balls in seven different camera views. Catching performance degraded almost linearly as a function of camera distance from 1PP, and adaptation to non-1PP was slow or non-existent after a quick initial and partial adaptation. Our result suggest that natural 1PP should be used whenever possible, and transitions between views should be minimized to minimize the user constantly struggling to adapt. We also discuss how our results can be explained by the relation of camera perspective and retinal optical flow, and what interaction techniques can mitigate 3PP interaction problems.

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