Tunnels vs. Wires: A Comparative Analysis of Two 3D Steering Tasks in Virtual Environments Inproceedings

Abstract:

Steering involves continuous movement along constrained paths, well-studied in 2D. The extensions to 3D using the Ring-and-Wire and Ball-and-Tunnel tasks were often treated as interchangeable in previous work. In this paper, we directly compare these two tasks through a within-subjects user study (n = 18) with varying 3D path orientations. The results show that Ring-and-Wire significantly outperformed Ball-and-Tunnel, with 17.17% lower task time, 21.65% higher throughput, and 21.52% faster average speed. Participants also preferred Ring-and-Wire and reported lower workload. Visual ambiguity, especially near the tunnel's rear surface, complicated spatial perception in the Ball-and-Tunnel task. We thus recommend that future studies choose 3D steering tasks carefully for experiments, as the two tasks are not interchangeable.