Developing Virtual Reality Design Guidelines for Efficient Depth Perception

Virtual Reality (VR) has become a fast-growing technology that is being utilized by different sectors of industries with a plethora of applications. With the growing popularity, this device has presented some challenges for VR application designers while placing objects in the 3-D VR environment. The optimal distance of objects from the users, or intended viewing distance as explained in the text, becomes a factor of paramount importance. This study focuses on helping designers overcome this difficulty by providing some guidelines following which, they can decide the intended viewing distance for their users. Eye-tracking data from users while they performed a visual search task was utilized and this data was utilized to provide the guidelines. Different variables were evaluated for this purpose. The effect of variables ‘Distance between Two points on the Same Plane’ (DTSP) and ‘Plane Distance’ was studied on ‘Time to Navigate’ variable. Machine learning models were utilized to predict the ‘Time to Navigate’ for points kept at different ‘DTSP’ at different ‘Plane Distances’ from the user. ‘Plane Distance’ in the dataset used by the study was in the range of 1 m – 2 m with 25 cm interval between each plane distance. Results showed that the ‘DTSP’ variable had a significant positive effect on ‘Time to Navigate’ and ‘Plane Distance’ had a weak negative effect on ‘Time to Navigate’. The intended viewing distance was found to be at a ‘Plane Distance’ of 2 m.