Select ahead

Virtual hand is one of the most intuitive metaphors for object selection in the virtual environment because of its natural mapping between the user action input and the cursor. However, it has a limitation of lengthy cursor manipulation for object selection task which is directly related to the level of workload of the user in performing object selection. In this paper, we propose 'Select Ahead' as a new object selection technique that improves efficiency by reducing the physical workload. Select Ahead guides the user to select the distant object along the estimated tendency of the recent cursor movements. We evaluate the relative performance of Select Ahead through the experiments in the 3D virtual environment with various object densities. The results show that Select Ahead significantly reduces the length of the cursor movements compared to those of the 3D point cursor and the 3D bubble cursor regardless of the object density. In the aspect of the total duration time for selection, Select Ahead outperforms the 3D point cursor and has no significant difference compared to that of the 3D bubble cursor.