Let's Get the Ball Rolling: Dynamic Affordances for an Object Retrieval Task in Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) is widely used in domains such as training, rehabilitation, entertainment, and gaming. For users to perceive affordances in VR, the virtual environment must provide sufficient perceptual information. Recent studies have focused on affordance perception—individuals' ability to discern action-relevant information—primarily in static environments. This study explored dynamic affordances by manipulating the size, speed, and gap width of a virtual target. Participants performed an object retrieval task, and performance was measured by the percentage of targets retrieved and the percentage of errors on each trial. Participants were more successful in retrieving larger targets, contrary to the expectation that larger objects would be harder to maneuver through the virtual doors. As anticipated, higher target speeds reduced success, highlighting the challenge of synchronizing movements with faster-moving targets. However, gap width did not significantly affect performance, suggesting that participants may have prioritized adapting to this dynamic property over the spatial constraints. This study provides deeper understanding of how individuals perceive and interact with moving objects in dynamic environments. These findings deepen the theoretical understanding of dynamic affordances and offer practical guidance for VR design, emphasizing the need to balance task demands with user capabilities and incorporate dynamic affordances for realistic and effective training, especially in critical applications like flight and police surveillance simulations, where responding to changing conditions is essential.