A Study of the Modification of the Speed and Size of the Cursor for Simulating Pseudo-Haptic Bumps and Holes ANATOLE LECUYER INRIA and JEAN-MARIE BURKHARDT Paris-Descartes University and CHEE-HIAN TAN INRIA ________________________________________________________________________ In previous work on so-called pseudo-haptic textures we investigated the possibility of simulating sensations of texture without haptic devices by using the sole manipulation of the speed of a mouse cursor (technique called hereby Speed technique). In this paper, we describe another technique (hereby called Size technique) to enhance the Speed technique and simulate texture sensations by varying the size of the cursor according to the local height of the texture displayed on the computer screen. With the Size technique, the user would see an increase (decrease) in cursor size corresponding to a positive (negative) slope of the texture. We have conducted a series of experiments to study and compare the use of both the Size and Speed technique for simulating simple shapes like bumps and holes. In Experiment 1, our results showed that participants could successfully identify bumps and holes using the Size technique alone. Performances obtained with the Size technique reached a similar level of accuracy as found previously with the Speed technique alone. In Experiment 2, we determined a Point of Subjective Equality between bumps simulated by each technique separately, which suggests that the two techniques provide information that can be perceptually equivalent. In Experiment 3, using paradoxical situations of conflict between the two techniques, we have found that participants’ answers were more influenced by the Size technique, suggesting a dominance of the Size technique over the Speed technique. Furthermore, we have found a mutual reinforcement of the techniques, i.e., when the two techniques were consistently combined, the participants were more efficient in identifying the simulated shapes. By conducting Experiment 4, we further observed the complex interactions between the information associated with the two techniques in the perception and in the decision process related to the accurate identification of bumps and holes. Taken together, our results promote the use of both techniques for the low-cost simulation of texture sensations in applications such as videogames, internet, graphical user interfaces, etc. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems–artificial, augmented, and virtual realities; H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces–evaluation/methodology; haptic I/O; input devices and strategies; user-centered design; H.1.2 [Information Systems]: User/Machine Systems–human factors; human information processing General Terms: Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Performance Additional Key Words and Phrases: Pseudo-Haptic, Texture, Cursor, Control/Display Ratio, Size, Speed, Bump, Hole ________________________________________________________________________ Main author’s address: Anatole Lécuyer, INRIA Rennes, Campus de Beaulieu, F-35042 Rennes Cedex, France, anatole.lecuyer@irisa.fr Permission to make digital/hard copy of part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the copyright notice, the title of the publication, and its date of appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. © 2001 ACM 1073-0516/01/0300-0034 $5.00