Adaptive Portals: Enhancing Virtual Reality Interaction Spaces With Real-Time Self-Adjusting Portals

This paper introduces foundational techniques for Adaptive Portals (AP); portals that adjust to users’ needs in Virtual Reality (VR). At the forefront of our contributions is the AP-Reach technique, with Entry and Exit strategies, designed to overcome the spatial limitations of portals and VR, enabling users to comfortably extend their reach to objects beyond their immediate vicinity. In parallel, we present PH-Reach as an alternative to the AP concept, also aimed at extending user reach inside portals. The effectiveness of these reach techniques is evaluated through a comparative user study, which compared Entry AP-Reach, Exit AP-Reach, and PHReach techniquesagainst traditional natural reach as a baseline. Results show Exit AP-Reach surpassed both its counterparts and the baseline to various degrees in terms of reducing task completion time, physical movement/demand, effort, and frustration. Additionally, this paper introduces AP-Bounds and AP-Restriction.