  Navigating spaces is an embodied experience. Examples can vary from rescue
workers trying to save people from natural disasters; a tourist finding their
way to the nearest coffee shop, or a gamer solving a maze. Virtual reality
allows these experiences to be simulated in a controlled virtual environment.
However, virtual reality users remain anchored in the real world and the
conventions by which the virtual environment is deployed influence user
performance. There is currently a need to evaluate the degree of influence
imposed by extrinsic factors and virtual reality hardware on its users.
Traditionally, virtual reality experiences have been deployed using
Head-Mounted Displays with powerful computers rendering the graphical content
of the virtual environment; however, user input has been facilitated using an
array of human interface devices including Keyboards, Mice, Trackballs,
Touchscreens, Joysticks, Gamepads, Motion detecting cameras and Webcams. Some
of these HIDs have also been introduced for non-immersive video games and
general computing. Due to this fact, a subset of virtual reality users has
greater familiarity than others in using these HIDs. Virtual reality
experiences that utilize gamepads (controllers) to navigate virtual
environments may introduce a bias towards usability among virtual reality users
previously exposed to video-gaming.
  This article presents an evaluative user study conducted using our ubiquitous
virtual reality framework with general audiences. Among our findings, we reveal
a usability bias among virtual reality users who are predominantly video
gamers. Beyond this, we found a statistical difference in user behavior between
untethered immersive virtual reality experiences compared to untethered
non-immersive virtual reality experiences.
