RealityLens: A User Interface for Blending Customized Physical World View into Virtual Reality

Paper Title

RealityLens: A User Interface for Blending Customized Physical World View into Virtual Reality

Paper Information

• Domain: Virtual Reality (VR) User Interface Design
• Keywords: Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, Augmented Virtuality, User Interface, User Experience, Environmental Awareness, Physical World Interaction, Mixed Reality Design, Customized Interface, User Behavior Analysis

Research Background and Problem

• Challenges Identified by Authors: Current VR systems often sacrifice users' perception of the physical world (PW) while providing immersive virtual experiences, leading to limitations when users need to interact with nearby objects or people.
• Importance of the Problem: These interaction limitations impact user safety (avoiding collisions with physical objects or people), reduce immersion (requiring frequent pauses in VR programs to check the physical world), and restrict multitasking capabilities in VR applications. Existing solutions are typically optimized for specific scenarios (e.g., collision avoidance, viewing the surrounding environment) and fail to address users' overall needs comprehensively.
• Motivation and Related Work:
  • Previous studies have focused on integrating physical world information or elements into virtual environments (VE), such as using cameras to render the surrounding environment or designing interactive interfaces.
  • However, these studies lack an in-depth understanding of users' customization needs, and existing interface designs are often static and specific, limiting users' ability to adjust how PW content is presented in VR based on their individual preferences.

Solution

• Method Overview: RealityLens is a user interface that enables VR users to flexibly view physical world content through customizable "Reality Windows." Users can adjust the size, position, and trigger conditions of these windows.
• Innovations:
  • Enables users to create and customize Reality Windows according to their needs.
  • Defines a new design space combining "placement modes" (user-centric and environment-centric) and "availability modes" (always-on, user-triggered, and event-triggered).
  • Provides a seamless virtual-physical integration experience, avoiding disruptions caused by pausing VR activities to switch to reality mode.
• Implementation Steps and Key Technologies:
  • Prototype developed using HTC Vive Pro VR hardware and Unity platform.
  • Allows users to configure Reality Windows via passthrough functionality, with controllers used to adjust window size and position.
  • Supports multiple placement methods (e.g., fixed to the field of view, hand-fixed, associated with specific targets/objects) and trigger conditions (e.g., user-triggered or event-triggered).

Research Outcomes

• Specific Results:
  • RealityLens helps users interact more smoothly between VR and the physical world while minimizing disruptions to overall immersion.
  • Provides design insights into user perception and deployment of RealityLens, such as interface adjustments to accommodate dynamic needs and the relationship between task scenarios and user behavior strategies.
• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:
  • Compared to traditional static or fixed interfaces, RealityLens is more flexible and supports a broader range of user needs.
  • Unlike directly using passthrough mode, RealityLens offers a continuous virtual-physical perception experience while preserving VR immersion.
• Experiment and Evaluation Results:
  • IPQ questionnaire results show that RealityLens improved users' overall VR experience scores (e.g., Presence, Spatial Presence).
  • Users rated the interface's ease of use (M=5.41/7) and learning difficulty (M=6/7) highly.
  • Participants expressed a preference for continuing to use RealityLens in future VR applications.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • Currently limited to manual configuration by users, lacking full automation. Future work could incorporate computer vision technologies for object detection and higher levels of automation.
  • RealityLens primarily focuses on information interaction between users and the physical world; future research could explore support for interactions between VR users and non-VR users (e.g., bystanders).
  • Experiments did not cover the direct impact of RealityLens on user task performance (e.g., typing speed, game scores), which warrants further investigation.

This is a structured summary and key point extraction of the paper. For deeper analysis or expansion on specific sections, please provide further instructions!