Motion and Interaction Tracking Tool for Virtual Reality Environments

Abstract

Evaluating user behavior in virtual reality environments is a challenging task, requiring leading with spatial user freedom and with non-conventional visualization and interaction devices. By gathering and analyzing user movements and interactions, researchers and even game designers can notice important behavioral patterns and correlations. This paper aims to present an automatic motion and interaction tracking tool for virtual reality environments that allows researchers and game developers to move from the pure observational paradigm, such as video recording and questionnaires, to one that considers quantitative data. After gathering users’ data, the tool automatically generates charts to assist the analysis process and also allows the replaying of all user behavior executed in the application. A case study case is shown in which a user navigates and interacts in a virtual reality city performing instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). Using the tool presented here, we conclude that tracking user behavior automatically in a virtual reality environment is possible. To facilitate the software development process, we have developed a Unity Asset, allowing developers to use the tool easily by importing our asset into their projects.