Towards Eye-Friendly VR: How Bright Should It Be?

Information

• Publication Type: Conference Paper
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Virtual Reality Group
• Date: March 2019
• Publisher: IEEE
• Open Access: yes
• Location: Osaka, Japan
• Lecturer: Khrystyna Vasylevska
• ISSN: 2642-5246
• Event: 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)
• DOI: 10.1109/VR.2019.8797752
• Call for Papers: Call for Paper
• Booktitle: 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)
• Pages: 1 – 9
• Keywords: Virtual Reality, User Study, Perception, Head-Mounted Display

Abstract

Visual information plays an important part in the perception of the world around us. Recently, head-mounted displays (HMD) came to the consumer market and became a part of the everyday life of thousands of people. Like with the desktop screens or hand-held devices before, the public is concerned with the possible health consequences of the prolonged usage and question the adequacy of the default settings. It has been shown that the brightness and contrast of a display should be adjusted to match the external light to decrease eye strain and other symptoms. Currently, there is a noticeable mismatch in brightness between the screen and dark background of an HMD that might cause eye strain, insomnia, and other unpleasant symptoms.

In this paper, we explore the possibility to significantly lower the screen brightness in the HMD and successfully compensate for the loss of the visual information on a dimmed screen. We designed a user study to explore the connection between the screen brightness HMD and task performance, cybersickness, users’ comfort, and preferences. We have tested three levels of brightness: the default Full Brightness, the optional Night Mode and a significantly lower brightness with original content and compensated content. Our results suggest that although users still prefer the brighter setting, the HMDs can be successfully used with significantly lower screen brightness, especially if the low screen brightness is compensated

Additional Files and Images

Weblinks

• Entry in the publication database of TU-Wien
• DOI: 10.1109/VR.2019.8797752

BibTeX

@inproceedings{Vasylevska_Khrystyna-2019-TEFVR,
  title =      "Towards Eye-Friendly VR: How Bright Should It Be?",
  author =     "Khrystyna Vasylevska and Hyunjin Yoo and Tara Akhavan and
               Hannes Kaufmann",
  year =       "2019",
  abstract =   "Visual information plays an important part in the perception
               of the world around us. Recently, head-mounted displays
               (HMD) came to the consumer market and became a part of the
               everyday life of thousands of people. Like with the desktop
               screens or hand-held devices before, the public is concerned
               with the possible health consequences of the prolonged usage
               and question the adequacy of the default settings. It has
               been shown that the brightness and contrast of a display
               should be adjusted to match the external light to decrease
               eye strain and other symptoms. Currently, there is a
               noticeable mismatch in brightness between the screen and
               dark background of an HMD that might cause eye strain,
               insomnia, and other unpleasant symptoms.  In this paper, we
               explore the possibility to significantly lower the screen
               brightness in the HMD and successfully compensate for the
               loss of the visual information on a dimmed screen. We
               designed a user study to explore the connection between the
               screen brightness HMD and task performance, cybersickness,
               users’ comfort, and preferences. We have tested three
               levels of brightness: the default Full Brightness, the
               optional Night Mode and a significantly lower brightness
               with original content and compensated content.   Our results
               suggest that although users still prefer the brighter
               setting, the HMDs can be successfully used with
               significantly lower screen brightness, especially if the low
               screen brightness is compensated",
  month =      mar,
  publisher =  "IEEE",
  location =   "Osaka, Japan",
  issn =       "2642-5246 ",
  event =      "2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User
               Interfaces (VR)",
  doi =        "10.1109/VR.2019.8797752",
  booktitle =  "2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User
               Interfaces (VR)",
  pages =      "1--9",
  keywords =   "Virtual Reality, User Study, Perception,  Head-Mounted
               Display",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2019/Vasylevska_Khrystyna-2019-TEFVR/",
}