Abstract
Object selection in virtual environments is one of the most common and recurring interaction tasks. Therefore, the used technique can critically influence the overall efficiency and usability of a system. IntenSelect is a scoring-based selection-by-volume technique that was shown to offer improved selection performance over conventional raycasting in virtual reality. This initial method, however, is most pronounced for small spherical objects that converge to a point-like appearance only, is hard to parameterize, and has inherent limitations in terms of flexibility. We present an enhanced version of IntenSelect called IntenSelect+ that was designed to overcome multiple shortcomings of the original IntenSelect approach. In an empirical within-subjects user study with 42 participants, we compared IntenSelect+ to IntenSelect and conventional raycasting on a variety of complex object configurations motivated by prior work. In addition to replicating the previously shown benefits of IntenSelect over raycasting, our results also demonstrate significant advantages of IntenSelect+ over IntenSelect regarding selection performance, task load, and user experience. We, therefore, conclude that IntenSelect+ is a promising enhancement of the original approach that enables faster, more precise, and more comfortable object selection in immersive virtual environments.