3D Selection Vault

Head-gaze pointing

A ray cast from the centre of the head-mounted display selects whatever the user faces, confirmed by dwell or a button.

How it works

The user turns the head to place a reticle on the target, then confirms by dwelling or with a controller or gesture. It is the default selection method on many headsets without controllers.

Papers

• Yuan Yuan Qian, Robert J. Teather (2017). The Eyes Don't Have It: An Empirical Comparison of Head-Based and Eye-Based Selection in Virtual Reality. ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction (SUI) doi:10.1145/3131277.3132182
• Jan Leusmann (2021). A Literature Review on Distant Object Selection Methods. Master's thesis, University of Stuttgart doi:10.18419/opus-12060
• Becky Spittle, Maite Frutos-Pascual, Chris Creed, Ian Williams (2023). A Review of Interaction Techniques for Immersive Environments. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics doi:10.1109/tvcg.2022.3174805
• Difeng Yu, Tilman Dingler, Eduardo Velloso, Jorge Goncalves (2024). Object Selection and Manipulation in VR Headsets: Research Challenges, Solutions, and Success Measurements. ACM Computing Surveys doi:10.1145/3706417
• Ruijia Chen, Tianyi Zhang, Sanbrita Mondal, Yukang Yan, Yuhang Zhao (2026). Head, Gaze, or Finger? Comparing Object Selection Techniques in Augmented Reality for People with Low Vision. arXiv preprint 2607.06778 doi:10.48550/arXiv.2607.06778
• Cheng-Long Deng, Lei Sun, Chu Zhou, Shu-Guang Kuai (2024). Dual-Gain Mode of Head-Gaze Interaction Improves the Efficiency of Object Positioning in a 3D Virtual Environment. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 40(8), pp. 2067–2082 doi:10.1080/10447318.2023.2223861
• Katsumi Minakata, John Paulin Hansen, I. Scott MacKenzie, Per Bækgaard, Vijay Rajanna (2019). Pointing by Gaze, Head, and Foot in a Head-Mounted Display. Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (COGAIN @ ETRA '19) doi:10.1145/3317956.3318150
• Jonas Blattgerste, Patrick Renner, Thies Pfeiffer (2018). Advantages of Eye-Gaze over Head-Gaze-Based Selection in Virtual and Augmented Reality under Varying Field of Views. Proceedings of the Workshop on Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN '18) doi:10.1145/3206343.3206349
• Kasım Özacar, Juan David Hincapié-Ramos, Kazuki Takashima, Yoshifumi Kitamura (2017). Target Selection in Head-Mounted Display Mixed Reality Environment: Comparing Smartphone, Gyro-Mouse and Head-Gaze. Interacting with Computers 29(4), 579-591 doi:10.1093/iwc/iww035