Multitouch interface is not good for spatial navigation in virtual reality

In this study, a spherical-panoramic virtual reality (VR) system equipped with a game controller (e.g., a gamepad) and a multitouch interface (e.g., an iPad) was developed. The multitouch interface was expected to yield better user experience compared to the game controller. However, the experiments of spatial navigation using finger gestures in the VR system showed the opposite results. The multitouch interface was proven qualitatively and quantitatively inferior to the game controller in the experiments. Qualitatively, based on the results of evaluation conforming to ISO 9241-9 standard, the game controller was preferred in the spatial navigation. Quantitatively, the mean completion time performed by the participants on the game controller was better than that on the multitouch interface (p<.01) in both angular and linear navigation tasks. Furthermore, the participants also secured less performance error in average while using the game controller in linear navigation tasks (p<.01). All in all, as an ultimate implication, any future developments of VR-based application may need to consider an empirical fact that multitouch interface is not good for spatial navigation.