Target acquisition in an occluded environment is challenging given the omni-directional and first-person view in virtual reality (VR). We propose Solar-Casting, a global scene filtering technique to manage occlusion in VR. To improve target search, users control a reference sphere centered at their head. I compared Solar-Casting to highly efficient selection techniques to acquire targets in a dense and occluded VR environment.

I performed both quantitative and qualitative studies. I recruited 12 participants from our organization. A within-subjects experiment was designed. I measured selection time and error rate for object selection tasks.

The results showed that Solar-Casting was at least as fast and accurate as the other three techniques in known environments, where the target location information is revealed. However, in unknown environments, requiring target search, Solar-Casting outperforms existing approaches.