Effect of Grip Style on Peripersonal Target Pointing in VR Head Mounted Displays

When working in Virtual Reality (VR), the user’s performance is affected by how the user holds the input device (e.g., controller), typically using either a precision or a power grip. Previous work examined these grip styles for 3D pointing at targets at different depths in peripersonal space and found that participants had a lower error rate with the precision grip but identified no difference in movement speed, throughput, or interaction with target depth. Yet, this previous experiment was potentially affected by tracking differences between devices. This paper reports an experiment that partially replicates and extends the previous study by evaluating the effect of grip style on the 3D selection of nearby targets with the same device. Furthermore, our experiment re-investigates the effect of the vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC) present in current stereo displays on 3D pointing in peripersonal space. Our results show that grip style significantly affects user performance. We hope that our results are useful for researchers and designers when creating virtual environments.