The Comfort Benefits of Gaze-Directed Steering

Spatial steering is a common virtual reality (VR) travel metaphor that affords virtual locomotion and spatial understanding. Variations of spatial steering include Gaze-, Hand-, and Torso-directed steering. We present a study that employed a dual-task methodology to investigate the user performance characteristics and cognitive loads of the three spatial steering techniques, in addition to several subjective measures. Using the two one-sided tests (TOST) procedure for dependent means, we have found that Gaze- and Hand-directed steering were statistically equivalent for travel performance and cognitive load. However, we found that Gaze-directed steering induced significantly less simulator sickness than Hand-directed steering.