Abstract:In virtual reality, the accurate cognition of egocentric distance and the reasonable design of pointing cursors play crucial roles in the user’s interactive experience and task execution efficiency. Given the extended research of Fitts’ law in three-dimensional pointing tasks, the interactive experiment of pointing cursors in virtual space was carried out taking the types of pointing cursors, egocentric distance, target size, and azimuth angles as variables. First, six hypotheses were proposed. For example, the difference among pointing cursors, egocentric distance, target size, and azimuth angles could affect the cognitive accuracy of egocentric distance and target pointing speed. Second, the target pointing accuracy and target pointing time were obtained based on the experimental data, and the change law of the cognitive accuracy of egocentric distance and target pointing speed was discussed. Experimental results showed that in virtual reality, the pointing cursor and target size all had a significant effect on the cognitive accuracy of egocentric distance and the target pointing speed, while the target azimuth angles and egocentric distance could only significantly affect the target pointing speed. The pointing cursor and egocentric distance had a two-way interactive effect on the cognitive accuracy of egocentric distance and the target pointing speed. The target pointing time of the two kinds of pointing cursors was linearly and positively correlated with the difficulty coefficient, which was consistent with the extended model of Fitts’ law in three-dimensional pointing tasks. This conclusion reveals the influencing factors of egocentric distance cognition, which can effectively guide the design of interactive methods and three-dimensional pointing tasks in virtual reality.