VRisbee: How Hand Visibility Impacts Throwing Accuracy and Experience in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Hand interaction plays a key role in virtual reality (VR) sports. While in reality, athletes mostly rely on haptic perception when holding and throwing objects, these sensational cues can be missing or differ in virtual environments. In this work, we investigated how the visibility of a virtual hand can support players when throwing and what impact it has on the overall experience. We developed a Frisbee simulation in VR and asked 29 study participants to hit a target. We measured the throwing accuracy and self-reports of presence, disc control, and body ownership. The results show a subtle advantage of hand visibility in terms of accuracy. Visible hands further improved the subjective impression of realism, body ownership and subjective control over the disc.