Performance measures of game controllers in a three-dimensional environment

Little work exists on the testing and evaluation of computer-game related input devices. This paper presents five new performance metrics and utilizes two tasks from the literature to quantify differences between input devices in constrained threedimensional environments, similar to “first-person”-genre games. The metrics are Mean Speed Variance, Mean Acceleration Variance, Percent View Moving, Target Leading Analysis, and Mean Time-to-Reacquire. All measures are continuous, as they evaluate movement during a trial. The tasks involved tracking a moving target for several seconds, with and without target acceleration. An evaluation between an X-Box gamepad and a standard PC mouse demonstrated the ability of the metrics to help reveal and explain performance differences between the devices. CR Categories: H.1.2 [User/Machine Systems]: Human Factors; H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Evaluation Methodology.