Interacting from Afar: A Study of the Relationship Between Usability and Presence in Object Selection at a Distance

Virtual Reality (VR) permits people to bend the rules of physics that exist in the real world, allowing for unique “magic” interactions. For example, if a user wants to interact with a far away object, they can summon it to themselves in the Virtual Environment (VE) as opposed to physically walking to it like they would need to outside of a headset. There is no set framework for how to facilitate this type of user interaction for the optimal user experience. We wanted to understand how people intuitively interact with objects at a distance, hypothesizing that the more usable someone found a system, the higher level of presence they would experience. We present a study that explores the relationship between presence and usability through questionnaires. We identify a positive correlation between presence and usability and propose a system that allows free-movement to encourage presence in VEs.