With a basic interaction method, its time to get some live feedback. I was able to get three people to try out the locomotion technique: My friends Caden and Thomas, and my roomate Sally. Caden was the only one who had some familiarity with VR applications, having reguarly played on the Quest 2, while Thomas and Sally both had next to no experience interacting with VR.
For my testing I wanted to test three things: How fast a player is able to perform each feature in the game without being told how to do it, How players react to the interaction task, and How long it takes them to complete the course. I would sit each player down and instruct them on how to open the application, and told them that while they are playing they should speak their thoughts out loud. I then would explain that you can move around the course with your hand, and that their goal would be to collect coins, complete the interaction task before every banner, and reach the finish line.
Caden
Caden was the first tester, and he managed to complete the course in 10 minutes and 37 seconds. After he started the application, it took him only 1 second to learn how to rotate the hand, as he looked left and right once the game started. He was a little surprised to be rotating at first, but caught on and begun moving the hand forward after about 0:10. Caden made sure to grab every coin he could for the first part of the course, and looked to be moving fairly rapidly throgh it also. When he came to the first interaction task, he almost ran right through it, but stopped and turned around once he saw the buttons appear. He tried to run into them at first, but when that didn’t work he tried using his left hand. Seeing that his left hand didn’t work, he went back to trying his right, and then flipped it, triggering the mode change at 1:52. He started the task, pointed towards the object, and grabbed it at 2:10. He had some trouble with the first object as he was getting used to grabbing and moving, and accidentally skipped the third object by pressing done, but in the end he completed the first interaction task by 4:03. The rest of the course was what I expected, but when he reached the floating coins, he did an almost perfect jump at 7:51. I was very surprised as he hadn’t done a single jump the entire time, and he managed to get almost every coin in the arc of the jump. After he finished, his biggest complaint was how shakey the object grabbing and moving was, and that it you could accidentally have your hand over the done button and skip an object, but otherwise he said he liked moving around and how you could jump.
Thomas
Thomas was able to complete the course in 9 minutes and 41 seconds. Like Caden, he rotated the hand within the first 5 seconds, and then begun moving forward at 0:13. As he was moving to collect coins, he accidentally triggered a jump at 0:39, and was very surprised to suddenly be in the air. He then begun to try and trigger another jump, and spent some time jumping in the air. He continued to collect the final bit of coins and reached the interaction task, and changed to the interaction mode at 1:40. Thomas grabbed the first object at 2:20, but didn’t try to perfectly allign the objects like Caden attempted, and finished the interaction task at 3:28. After he passed through the banner, he continued collecting coins and jumping around, but accidentlly gained too much speed and zoomed past the second interaction task and into the banner, which got rid of the task. He asked if he needed to restart but I told him it was fine, and he continued but went noticeably slower through the final leg of the course. When he reached the last interaction task, he tried to align the objects to the best of his ability, but was having difficulties moving it to the correct angle. His final thoughts were again that moving objects was a hassle with how much you have to move if you want to get it in the correct position, and that rotating is a little too fast for him.
Sally
Our final tester, Sally completed the course after 11 minutes and 23 seconds. Once the game started, she rotated the hand after 0:03, looking around the environment like Caden did. She found that rotating was making her a little dizzy, but claimed that because she was sitting down it wasn’t so bad. She began moving at the 0:16, following the coins, but said that moving the hand was tiring. She grabbed her wrist, and triggered the interaction mode at 0:50. She was suprised at first, but quickly changed back to moving mode, and then spent some time switching between the two modes. Once she reached the first interaction task, she changed modes and begun working on the first object, but was a bit too far away from the object. She then accidentally swiped over the done button, moving her to the next object. She switched modes to get a bit closer to the task, and then grabbed the second object at 2:51. She carefully aligned the objects and finished the interaction task at 4:29. She continued through the course, going for every coin she could, and when she came to an interaction task she would align the objects to the best of her ability. She would move around, both in-game and in the real world, and approach the objects from different angles to get them in the best position possible. After completing the second interaction task and going down the hill, she noticed the floating coins and stopped right before the beginning of the arc. She then attempted to jump by lifting her hand rapidly, then tried again by fanning her fingers out, but her fingers were not in the jump collider before so it didn’t work. She tried again with her hand beginning in a fist, and this time it triggered a jump at 8:54. She spent some time perfecting her technique, and then begun collecting the floating coins. She didn’t get them all in one jump, as she had not built up enough speed going into the jump, but she managed to grab them all after 4 jumps. After completing the final task and then the course, she said that it was a bit strenuous to keep moving your fingers to get around, but thought the movement system was fun. Like the other playtesters, her biggest complaint was the challenge of aligning the objects for the task. She felt that it was too much effort while also being too shakey.
Overall, I was surprised on how fast the playtesters were able to get through the course with no prior knowledge of the game and its systems. As I thought, the interaction method would be the biggest complaint of the testers, but they all managed to change modes and grab objects without me guiding them, which was what I cared the most about. It was also interesting, but i guess also expected, that every playtester started rotating within the first 5 seconds of beginning the game. Its only natural to want to get your surroundings before beginning something. It was very fun to see them attempting the course, learning how they can move the fastest, interact, and grab things, but it was great seeing how once they learned something, they instantly adapted to it and begun utilizing it. I think that because they aren’t having to use a controller, and are purely interacting with the game through their hands, it somehow makes the system click faster within the players, but I would need more playtesters and a version with controllers to actually test that.
Here you can see me running through the course to get a better idea of what the playtesters went through.