Feeling of Control in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality for Virtual Object Manipulation

Immersive technologies, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), have received widespread attention in recent years. With the rapid advancement of head-mounted displays (HMDs) technology, AR and VR offer users the capacity to interact with virtual objects in immersive environments. Although AR and VR are both based on HMDs, their own unique features differentiate them from one another. Besides, virtual object manipulation is an essential element in AR and VR due to the immersive features, and the existing research has concentrated on enhancing the user experience for virtual object manipulation in AR and VR applications. However, there is little literature on the influence of different immersive environments on users’ feeling of control for virtual object manipulation. Therefore, this study aims to compare users’ feeling of control for virtual object manipulation between AR and VR environments via self-report and performance measures. According to the results, the study concludes that the VR environment results in a better feeling of control than the AR environment when users manipulate virtual objects with mid-air gestures.