Exploration of interactive nuclide chart visualisations in virtual reality for physics education

Abstract

Immersive virtual reality (VR) is used for various types of learning content. One fundamental but challenging part of VR applications are suitable interaction techniques. In this work, we use the example of interactive nuclide charts to investigate interaction techniques in VR. For this purpose, four variants of visualising an interactive nuclide chart for decay rows in a VR environment were implemented: The floor-freehand variant offers the possibility to move freely on the chart, the floor-controller variant enables teleportation to nuclides using the controller, the wall-freehand variant uses hand gestures to select nuclides, and the wall-controller variant also uses the controller to select nuclides on the wall. Our user study with 24 participants indicated that the wall-controller variant was favoured in terms of usability and user experience.