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1. Estimating Perceptual Depth Changes with Eye Vergence and Interpupillary Distance using an Eye Tracker in Virtual Reality

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3517031.3529632  

   Arefin, Mohammed Safayet; Swan II, J. Edward; Cohen Hoffing, Russell A.; Thurman, Steven M. (June 2022, ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications)

   Blascheck, Tanja; Bradshaw, Jessica; Vrzakova, Hana (Ed.)

   Virtual Reality (VR) technology has advanced to include eye-tracking, allowing novel research, such as investigating how our visual system coordinates eye movements with changes in perceptual depth. The purpose of this study was to examine whether eye tracking could track perceptual depth changes during a visual discrimination task. We derived two depth-dependent variables from eye tracker data: eye vergence angle (EVA) and interpupillary distance (IPD). As hypothesized, our results revealed that shifting gaze from near-to-far depth significantly decreased EVA and increased IPD, while the opposite pattern was observed while shifting from far-to-near. Importantly, the amount of change in these variables tracked closely with relative changes in perceptual depth, and supported the hypothesis that eye tracker data may be used to infer real-time changes in perceptual depth in VR. Our method could be used as a new tool to adaptively render information based on depth and improve the VR user experience. 

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2. A Pilot Study Comparing User Interactions Between Augmented and Virtual Reality

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47966-3_1  

   Williams, Adam; Zhou, Xiaoyan; Batmaz, Anil_Ufuk; Pahud, Michel; Ortega, Francisco (December 2023, In: Bebis, G., et al. Advances in Visual Computing. ISVC 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

   Immersive Analytics (IA) and consumer adoption of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) are both rapidly growing. When used in conjunction, stereoscopic IA environments can offer improved user understanding and engagement; however, it is unclear how the choice of stereoscopic display impacts user interactions within an IA environment. This paper presents a pilot study that examines the impact of stereoscopic display choice on object manipulation and environmental navigation using consumeravailable AR and VR HMDs. Our observations indicate that the display can impact how users manipulate virtual content and how they navigate the environment. 

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3. 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

   Bhattarai, B. (July 2021, Poster: Use of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality(VR) to tackle 4 amongst the ”14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century” identified by National Academy of Engineering)

   This poster presents the use of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) to tackle 4 amongst the “14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century” identified by National Academy of Engineering. AR and VR are the technologies of the present and the future. AR creates a composite view by adding digital content to a real world view, often by using the camera of a smartphone and VR creates an immersive view where the user’s view is often cut off from the real world. The 14 challenges identify areas of science and technology that are achievable and sustainable to assist people and the planet to prosper. The 4 challenges tackled using AR/VR application in this poster are: Enhance virtual reality, Advance personalized learning, Provide access to clean water, and Make solar energy affordable. The solar system VR application is aimed at tackling two of the engineering challenges: (1) Enhance virtual reality and (2) Advance personalized learning. The VR application assists the user in visualizing and understanding our solar system by using a VR headset. It includes an immersive 360 degree view of our solar system where the user can use controllers to interact with celestial bodies-related information and to teleport to different points in the space to have a closer look at the planets and the Sun. The user has six degrees of freedom. The AR application for water tackles the engineering challenge: “Provide access to clean water”. The AR water application shows information on drinking water accessibility and the eco-friendly usage of bottles over plastic cups within the department buildings inside Auburn University. The user of the application has an augmented view of drinking water information on a smartphone. Every time the user points the smartphone camera towards a building, the application will render a composite view with drinking water information associated to the building. The Sun path visualization AR application tackles the engineering challenge: “Make solar energy affordable”. The application helps the user visualize sun path at a selected time and location. The sun path is augmented in the camera view of the device when the user points the camera towards the sky. The application provides information on sun altitude and azimuth. Also, it provides the user with sunrise and sunset data for a selected day. The information provided by the application can aid the user with effective solar panel placement. Using AR and VR technology to tackle these challenges enhances the user experience. The information from these applications are better curated and easily visualized, thus readily understandable by the end user. Therefore, usage of AR and VR technology to tackle these type of engineering challenges looks promising. 

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4. An Empirical Evaluation of the Calibration of Auditory Distance Perception under Different Levels of Virtual Environment Visibilities

   https://doi.org/10.1109/VR58804.2024.00089  

   Lin, Wan-Yi; Venkatakrishnan, Rohith; Venkatakrishnan, Roshan; Babu, Sabarish V; Pagano, Christopher; Lin, Wen-Chieh (March 2024, IEEE)

   The perception of distance is a complex process that often involves sensory information beyond that of just vision. In this work, we investigated if depth perception based on auditory information can be calibrated, a process by which perceptual accuracy of depth judgments can be improved by providing feedback and then performing corrective actions. We further investigated if perceptual learning through carryover effects of calibration occurs in different levels of a virtual environment’s visibility based on different levels of virtual lighting. Users performed an auditory depth judgment task over several trials in which they walked where they perceived an aural sound to be, yielding absolute estimates of perceived distance. This task was performed in three sequential phases: pretest, calibration, posttest. Feedback on the perceptual accuracy of distance estimates was only provided in the calibration phase, allowing to study the calibration of auditory depth perception. We employed a 2 (Visibility of virtual environment) ×3 (Phase) ×5 (Target Distance) multi-factorial design, manipulating the phase and target distance as within-subjects factors, and the visibility of the virtual environment as a between-subjects factor. Our results revealed that users generally tend to underestimate aurally perceived distances in VR similar to the distance compression effects that commonly occur in visual distance perception in VR. We found that auditory depth estimates, obtained using an absolute measure, can be calibrated to become more accurate through feedback and corrective action. In terms of environment visibility, we find that environments visible enough to reveal their extent may contain visual information that users attune to in scaling aurally perceived depth. 

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5. A Scoping Review of Assistance and Therapy with Head-Mounted Displays for People Who Are Visually Impaired

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3522693  

   Li, Yifan; Kim, Kangsoo; Erickson, Austin; Norouzi, Nahal; Jules, Jonathan; Bruder, Gerd; Welch, Gregory F. (April 2022, ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing)

   Given the inherent visual affordances of Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) used for Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR), they have been actively used over many years as assistive and therapeutic devices for the people who are visually impaired. In this paper, we report on a scoping review of literature describing the use of HMDs in these areas. Our high-level objectives included detailed reviews and quantitative analyses of the literature, and the development of insights related to emerging trends and future research directions. Our review began with a pool of 1251 papers collected through a variety of mechanisms. Through a structured screening process, we identified 61 English research papers employing HMDs to enhance the visual sense of people with visual impairments for more detailed analyses. Our analyses reveal that there is an increasing amount of HMD-based research on visual assistance and therapy, and there are trends in the approaches associated with the research objectives. For example, AR is most often used for visual assistive purposes, whereas VR is used for therapeutic purposes. We report on eight existing survey papers, and present detailed analyses of the 61 research papers, looking at the mitigation objectives of the researchers (assistive versus therapeutic), the approaches used, the types of HMDs, the targeted visual conditions, and the inclusion of user studies. In addition to our detailed reviews and analyses of the various characteristics, we present observations related to apparent emerging trends and future research directions. 

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