Plausible and Effective Gesture-Based Interactions for the Virtual Runway

As Virtual Reality and other virtual environment platforms evolve, the need for and research into diverse new input methods as alternatives to traditional keyboard inputs have been highlighted. This study developed a motion recognition-based input method using IMU sensors to track user movements, thereby designing a virtual runway where users can control avatars within a virtual environment. Additionally, we defined flight movements for human avatars in virtual environments and trained a motion generation network using a preprocessed dataset to enable the generation of these flight movements. User motions were recognized through the measurement of joint angles and permissible ranges. To assess the usability and user experience of this innovative approach, a usability test was conducted that compared the gesture-based input method to traditional keyboard input under various experimental conditions. The results demonstrated that the gesture-based input method had a lower error rate than keyboard input. Furthermore, the gesture-based input method outperformed keyboard input in the hedonic quality of the User Experience Questionnaire: attractiveness, simulation, and novelty.