Zoom-fwd: Efficient technique for 3D gestual interaction with distant and occluded objects in virtual reality

In the last decade, there has been an extraordinary acceleration in immersive technologies, including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). The VR interfaces have widely explored various 3D interaction-based approaches. 3D interaction is one of the main features of any VR system. However, the problems while selecting and manipulating distant and occluded 3D virtual objects in VR are still unresolved and suffer from a lack of precision and accuracy. To interact with VR/AR systems, various devices such as VR headsets or gloves are used. These devices are not very reliable yet; in fact they are inconvenient and invasive to a person's comfort. Currently, the natural user interfaces (NUIs) are increasingly introduced in human computer interaction (HCI) systems as gestures recognition, which prove to be very useful in the improvement of the user engagement and presence sensing. More particularly, they provide more user-friendly and nonintrusive 3D interaction methods and techniques. In this article, the Zoom-fwd, which is an efficient 3D interaction technique is presented. The proposed technique uses gesture recognition for different 3D interaction tasks like selection and manipulation. This new approach allows an efficient interaction with distant and occluded objects, while providing a precise selection, even when the environment is crowded. The Zoom-fwd technique is a software solution for a number of hardware and software problems. A user study is conducted to determine whether the proposed technique is more suitable when performing interaction tasks. The results show that the Zoom-fwd technique provides effective interaction with distant and occluded objects, by improving the user task completion performance. In addition, this indicates that selection precision has been enhanced significantly with the Zoom-fwd technique.