With the increasing variety of gaming devices, the way people can play computer games has expanded. While computer gaming often involves interacting with a computer with a keyboard and mouse or via a touchscreen with a human finger, more recent gaming can be done in immersive virtual reality (VR) environments with a controller. For online games, these platforms have network latency in addition to local latency added by the system hardware and software. Since most online computer games provide several player actions and have latency compensation techniques built into the system, it is difficult to assess the effects of latency. The goal of this thesis is to compare the effects of latency on three different gaming devices with different inputs: a PC with a mouse, a tablet with a finger and a VR device with a controller. We created a cross platform application for the isolated action of moving target selection with controlled amounts of input delay and conducted a user study. Based on our analysis from 30 participants, we found delays and task difficulties affect the performance as well as the quality of experience of the users. The PC with mouse has the highest number of clicks and the longest selection times and the tablet has the lowest. The higher delays and higher task difficulties according to target size or speed have longer selection times compared to lower delays and task difficulties.

Creator

• Kundu, Aritra

Contributors

• Roberts, Charles Davis
• Claypool, Mark L.

Degree

• MS

Unit

• Computer Science

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• etd-25276

Advisor

• Claypool, Mark L.

Defense date

• 2021-05-21

Year

• 2021

Date created

• 2021-06-01

Resource type

• Thesis

Rights statement

• In Copyright

License

• Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 International

Last modified

• 2023-10-09