Assessing the effectiveness of traditional and virtual reality interfaces in spherical mechanism design

Virtual reality (VR) interfaces have the potential to enhance the engineeri ng design process, but before industry embraces them, the benefits must be understood and documented. The current research compared two software appli cations, one which uses a traditional human-computer interface (HCI) and on e which uses a virtual reality HCI, that were developed to aid engineers in designing complex three-dimensional spherical mechanisms. Participants use d each system to design a spherical mechanism and then evaluated the differ ent interfaces. Participants rated their ability to interact with the compu ter images, their feelings about each interface, and their preferences for which interface device to use for certain tasks. The results indicated that participants preferred a traditional interface for interaction tasks and a VR interface for visual tasks. These results provide information about how to improve implementation of VR technology, specifically for complex three -dimensional design applications.