Virtual reality applications often make use of motion tracking to incorporate physical hand movements into interaction techniques for selection and manipulation techniques of virtual objects. To increase realism and allow direct hand interaction, real-world physical objects can be aligned with virtual objects to provide tactile feedback and physical grasping. However, unless a physical space is custom configured to match a specific virtual reality experience, the ability to perfectly match the physical and virtual objects is limited. Our research addresses this challenge by studying methods that allow one physical object to be mapped to multiple virtual objects that can exist as different virtual locations in an egocentric reference frame. We study two such techniques: one that introduces a static translational offset between the virtual and physical hand before a hand reach, and one that dynamically interpolates the position of the virtual hand during a reaching motion. We conducted two controlled experiments to assess how the two techniques affect reaching effectiveness, comfort, and ability to adapt to the remapping techniques when reaching for objects with different types of mismatches between physical and virtual locations. In addition, we present a case study to demonstrate how the hand remapping techniques could be used in an immersive game application to support realistic hand interaction while optimizing usability. With our results, we discuss future considerations for how to best implement passive haptics with remapping techniques and provide guidelines for effective implementation
