DiscPIM

Also known as Disc Projective Interactive Map

The left controller sweeps a large cone through the scene, and the objects inside appear live as small copies on a flat disc held in that hand, keeping their left-right and up-down layout; the right hand grabs the copy, which picks up the real object.

How it works

PIM stands for Projective Interactive Map. While the left trigger is held, a 1.5 m wide, 20 m long cone highlights objects, and their positions in the left controller's frame are stretched to fill a 0.4 m disc, dropping depth. Overlapping copies under the right controller can be frozen into eight slots around the disc's edge with the right trigger. The right grip grabs a copy, which then disappears from the map while the original object is picked up. The map keeps the last state when the trigger is released. With 24 participants on a Quest 2 (128–512 spheres, target always occluded), search trials took 6.02 s with DiscPIM, 7.23 s with CylinderPIM, 7.52 s with ConeExpand and 8.73 s with GravityZone+; repeat trials 4.46, 4.49, 4.06 and 6.62 s. Both mini-maps beat GravityZone+ and needed less effort; neither differed significantly from ConeExpand.

Papers

Mykola Maslych, Yahya Hmaiti, Ryan Ghamandi, Paige Leber, Ravi Kiran Kattoju, Jacob Belga, Joseph J. LaViola (2023). Toward Intuitive Acquisition of Occluded VR Objects Through an Interactive Disocclusion Mini-map. IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) doi:10.1109/VR55154.2023.00061