A Review on Interaction Techniques in Virtual Environments

With continuous interest and effort over the past few decades, the field of virtual reality has gone through a rapid development. However, improvements in virtual reality technologies and virtual environment interaction have not been matched by corresponding improvement in our knowledge of how to classify the interaction techniques in an established way. Thus, the goal of this paper is to classify the existing interaction techniques in virtual environments and identify the classification factors. First, we gathered previous studies and reviews related to virtual environment interaction. After a thorough examination of the collected works, we were able to identify a variety of virtual environment interaction techniques and their underlying characteristics. According to the characteristics, the existing virtual environment interaction techniques were classified into two main categories, each with three different subcategories. The categories were characterized to clarify the classification scheme used. Through a systematic review on the virtual environment interaction techniques and their classification methods, this paper would serve as a reference and guidance in understanding the current research trend, and further formulate new research topics related to interaction techniques in virtual environments.

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