Effects of Different Auditory Feedback Frequencies in Virtual Reality 3D Pointing Tasks

Abstract

Auditory error feedback is commonly used in 3D Virtual Reality (VR) pointing experiments to increase participants’ awareness of their misses. However, few papers describe the parameters of the auditory feedback, such as the frequency. In this study, we asked 15 participants to perform an ISO 9241-411 pointing task in a distributed remote experiment. In our study, we used three forms of auditory feedback, i.e., C4 (262 Hz), C8 (4186 Hz) and none. According to the results, we observed a speed-accuracy trade-off for the C8 tones compared to C4 ones: subjects were slower, and their throughput performance decreased with the C8 while their error rate decreased. Still, for larger targets there was no speed-accuracy trade-off, and subjects were only slower with C8 tones. Overall, the frequency of the feedback had a significant impact on the user’s performance. We thus suggest that practitioners, developers, and designers report the frequency they used in their VR applications.