The Effect of Realism on Hand Redirection in Immersive Environments

Redirection in virtual reality (VR) enhances haptic feedback versatility by relaxing the need for precise alignment between virtual and physical objects. In mixed reality (MR), where users see the real world and their own hands, haptic redirection enables a physical interaction with virtual objects but poses greater challenges due to altering real-world perception. This paper investigates the effect of the realism of the user's surroundings and of the user's hand on haptic redirection. The user's familiarity with their actual physical surroundings and their actual hand could make the redirection manipulations easier-or harder-to detect. In a user study (N = 30) participants saw either a virtual environment or their actual physical surroundings, and saw their hand rendered either with a generic 3D model or with a live 2D video sprite of their actual hand. The study used a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) design asking participants to detect hand redirections that bridged physical to virtual offsets of varying magnitudes. The results show that participants were not more sensitive to 2D video sprite hand redirection than to VR hand redirection, which supports the use of haptic redirection in MR.