Gestural locomotion in 360ºvirtual tour of coimbra

Abstract

The locomotion between 360ºimages in virtual reality environments can be challenging due to the limited types of possible movements. In this work we created a virtual tour of the city of Coimbra to study the locomotion between 360ºimages through the usage of gestures. To accomplish this, we resorted to the usage of the Myo armband which can read up to 5 pre-defined gestures. These gestures allow the navigation between images, such as go to the previous location, to the next location or look at a map and select a location to go to. It is also possible to trigger other types of actions that do not involve locomotion such as, for example, open pop-ups containing information. We ran usability tests to evaluate the experience of this virtual visit, which allowed us to conclude that the majority of the participants believed they were in a virtual environment but felt some vision related discomfort. Not only that, but users thought that the gestures used to trigger the features of the application were natural and intuitive.