Rotating virtual objects with real handles

Times for virtual object rotations reported in the literature are of the order of 10 seconds or more and this is far longer than it takes to manually orient a “real” object, such as a cup. This is a report of a series of experiments designed to investigate the reasons for this difference and to help design interfaces for object manipulation. The results suggest that two major factors are important. Having the hand physically in the same location as the virtual object being manipulated is one. The other is based on whether the object is being rotatted to a new, randomly determined orientation, or is always rotated to the same position. Making the object held in the hand have the same physical shape as the object being visually manipulated was not found to be a significant factor. The results are discussed in the context of interactive virtual environments.