Augmenting User Experience in Virtual Environments Through Haptic Feedback

User immersion inside an unfamiliar Virtual Environment can be significantly increased by exploring the possibilities of haptic technology. Claim: bidirectional physical interaction-where both, the user and the system, play an active role-could be the most efficient way to assist and engage the user. This paper consists in a comparison between three assistance methods that complete the tactile feedback: two visual approaches and one based on force attraction. In order to evaluate the influence of these methods over user performance a testing application has been implemented. The purpose was to study the user response to the force-attraction based method, and the efficiency of this method. Visual methods increased the users' feeling of presence and cognition, allowing a better perception of the 3D space. Thus, they were very efficient in the navigation part. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the method based on haptic feedback was confirmed especially in the interaction part, since it allowed the user to focus on the virtual object.