Sun Menu

Sun Menu is a 24-item radial menu for selecting items with a ray cast from a controller in VR.

In a standard radial menu (Pie Menu), each item gets a narrower angle as the number of items grows. With 24 items, each item has only 15°, so hand tremor and tracking jitter easily cause users to select a neighboring item by mistake.

Sun Menu divides the 24 items into eight 45° regions and places three options on the outer edge of each region. Users hold the trigger, move the ray outward, and release it over the target option. Users first aim at a wide region and make the fine choice at the outer edge, so they never have to aim directly at a narrow item.

Each outer option is shaped like a spike pointing outward. As users move the ray outward, they can catch it on the end of a spike to select that option. This makes it hard to slip off the target option even when the hand shakes slightly.

In an experiment with 12 participants, Sun Menu had a significantly lower selection error rate than Pie Menu, with no significant difference in selection time. This work was accepted as a poster at UIST 2026.