Evaluation on Relationship between Useful Field-of-View and Presentation Method in Optical AR Head-Mounted-Display

A lifestyle of wearing multiple wearable devices is becoming a daily routine. However, the use of wearable devices may narrow the user’s UFOV (Useful Field Of View). Not only presenting information by wearable devices but also wearing wearable devices themselves may increase cognitive load, and it causes the UFOV narrowing. It is important to understand how wearable devices affect the UFOV because the narrowed UFOV could lead to overlooking surrounding objects. In this paper, we focused on an optical AR HMD (Head-Mounted Display) that partially occupied the visual field and investigated the effects of wearing the device and presenting information on the UFOV. The experimental results confirmed that wearing the optical AR HMD significantly narrows the UFOV, and presenting information further narrows it significantly. Additionally, reacting to the presented information significantly narrows the UFOV. Based on these results, we presented a guideline for using optical AR HMDs.