The efficiency of visually guided movement in real and virtual space

There is an increasing interest in the use of low-cost virtual reality (VR) for training and simulation. As effective training for many tasks requires efficient sensory–motor coordination, we investigated the efficiency of visually guided movement in VR using a standardised Fitts’ tapping task. Throughput is a measure of movement efficiency and was significantly lower in VR than for a touchscreen. This difference was particularly marked for targets distributed in depth and is likely to reflect known limitations of VR visual display. The addition of haptic cues increased throughput slightly. The lower throughput in VR was due to both a decrease in the precision of pointing and an increase in movement time. Movement distances were equivalent for the touchscreen and VR, but on average slightly smaller than specified by the task. VR presentation also resulted in more numerous double touches on targets. There was evidence of a small and rapid learning effect for VR, but this was limited to the first block of 9 trials (252 movements). For tasks requiring skilled sensory–motor coordination, current low-cost VR may not provide the same transfer of training as the real world.