Empirical Studies on Selection and Travel Performance of Eye-tracking in Virtual Reality

We presented two studies on VR selection and travel performances using eye-based interaction via FOVE head-mounted display (HMD). Our selection experiment was modelled after the ISO 9241-9 reciprocal selection task, with targets presented at varying depths in a custom virtual environment. We compared eye-based and head-based in isolation, and the combination of eye-tracking and head-tracking. Results indicate that eye-only offered the worst performance in terms of error rate, selection times, and throughput. Head-only offered significantly better performance. In our travel study, the task involved controlling movement direction while flying through target rings in the air by seven techniques. We found that the completion time and success rates of head+eye were very close to head-only, while eye-only did not perform better than head+eye due to learning effects and calibration issues, which also yield high cybersickness. Head+eye compensated for the eye-tracker issues and would be potentially an alternative to traditional traveling techniques.