Evaluating and Modeling the Effect of Frame Rate on Steering Performance in Virtual Reality

Prior work has shown that frame rate significantly influences user behavior in fast-response tasks in 2D and 3D contexts. However, its impact on a steering task, which involves navigating an object along a path from the start to the end, remains relatively unexplored, especially in the context of virtual reality (VR). This task is considered a typical non-fast-response activity, as it does not demand rapid reactions within a limited time frame. Our work aims to understand and model users&#x0027; steering behavior and predict movement time with different task complexities and frame rates in VR environments. We first conducted a user study to collect user behavior in a steering task with four factors: frame rate, path length, width, and radius of curvature. Based on the results, we then quantified the effects of frame rate and built two predictive models. Our models exhibited the best fit (<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$r^{2}\gt 0.957$</tex-math></inline-formula>) and over 17&#x0025; improvement in prediction accuracy for movement time compared to existing models. Our models&#x0027; robustness was further validated by applying them to predict steering performance with different VR tasks and frame rates. The two models keep the best predictability for both movement time and speed.