Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 11, numbers 1 and 2, 2018 // View article
Authors:
Roy Oberhauser
Carsten Lecon
Keywords: Virtual reality; mixed reality; augmented virtuality; software visualization; program comprehension; software engineering; speech recognition; voice control
Abstract:
Due to its abstract nature, program code structures have been inherently challenging to visualize. As virtual reality (VR) hardware products become common, their utilization for providing insights into these software structures become feasible. However, for certain user programmer-centric interaction scenarios, typical VR interfaces (controller held in each hand) can be awkward. This paper describes our VR and mixed reality (MR) fly-through software structure approach for visualizing internal program code structures and investigates additional interfaces to augment the virtuality. MR use of any keyboard and mouse are supported for programming tasks. To interface with a virtual tablet menu that is used as an oracle, a real tablet is used as a touchpad for the VR tablet. Voice control of the tablet menu was also implemented and investigated in comparison to the other interfaces. The paper evaluates the various VR and MR interfaces for their suitability for selected software development and computer science educational tasks. The evaluation results provide insight into which interfaces were more efficient and preferred by subjects.
Pages: 34 to 44
Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2018. Used with permission.
Publication date: June 30, 2018
Published in: journal
ISSN: 1942-2628