Comparing Pinch and Point Poses for Single-Stroke Drawing in Virtual Reality

This paper presents an investigation of bare-hand input for drawing single strokes in extended reality. Through two user studies, we compared two hand poses: pinch and point, across three surface types: a physical surface, a virtual surface, and no surface (free space). We evaluated the participant-produced strokes based on geometric and algebraic properties, performance, and subjective experience. Despite the common use of point poses for direct interaction with 2D content, our results showed that the pinch pose outperformed the point pose across most metrics. We discuss the strengths and limitations of each hand pose for bare-hand stroke input and provide insights into the role of surfaces in drawing tasks within extended reality.