On the Validity of Using First-Person Shooters for Fitts ’ Law Studies

3D first-person shooter games provide highly polish ed, compelling and entertaining environments that far out-strip the refinement of most research syste ms. Many also provide extensive support for tailori ng the environment, allowing researchers to adapt them to specific research agendas. This paper examines using 3D first-person shooter game environments for motivating participants in Fitts’ Law studies. In particular, we examine whether the first-person met aphor for target acquisition, which involves rotati ng the world to pan the target to the screen-centre, i s accurately modelled by Fitts’ Law, and whether th e resultant Fitts’ metrics are representative of trad itional cursor-based acquisition. Results show excellent Fitts’ modelling, with metrics that are s imilar to traditional pointing.