VR-Based User Interactions to Exploit Infinite Space in Programming Activities

Virtual reality (VR) devices have now become a commodity, and as such, VR is percolating the traditional working environment of software programmers. Current approaches to use VR as the medium to immerse software programmers essentially project classical IDE windows in the virtual environment: the very same VSCode or IntelliJ window is seen through the VR device. As a consequence, the same constraints imposed by a physical screen are found in the VR environment, thus representing a missed opportunity. VRIDE is a new VR-based environment for object-oriented programming to let software developers carry out their activities in a full VR-based immersed environment. VRIDE innovates by offering interactions based on Code Cubes that are designed to exploit the infinite space in the VR environment. Through code cube interactions our approach disrupts the traditional mapping of windows from desktop to VR by supporting dedicated actions for navigation, inspection, and space management. Our prototype illustrates the feasibility of having a full-immersive virtual environment for software programmers.