An Exploration of Non-Isomorphic 3D Rotation in Surround Screen Virtual Environments

Non-isomorphic rotational mappings have been shown to be an effective technique for rotation of virtual objects in 3D desktop environments. In this paper, we present an experimental study that explores the performance characteristics of isomorphic and non-isomorphic rotation techniques in a surround screen virtual environment. Our experiment compares isomorphic rotation with non-isomorphic rotation techniques utilizing three separate amplification factors, two different thresholds for task completion, and two different angular ranges for virtual object rotation. Our results show that a non-isomorphic mapping with an amplification factor of three is both optimal in terms of completion time and accuracy and is most preferred by our test subjects. In addition, our results suggest that, in a surround screen virtual environment, rotation tasks using both isomorphic and non-isomorphic rotational mappings can be completed faster and more accurately compared to previous studies exploring rotation in 3D user interfaces.