HiveFive: Immersion Preserving Attention Guidance in Virtual Reality

Recent advances in Virtual Reality (VR) technology, such as larger fields of view, have made VR increasingly immersive. However, a larger field of view often results in a user focusing on certain directions and missing relevant content presented elsewhere on the screen. With HiveFive, we propose a technique that uses swarm motion to guide user attention in VR. The goal is to seamlessly integrate directional cues into the scene without losing immersiveness. We evaluate HiveFive in two studies. First, we compare biological motion (from a prerecorded swarm) with non-biological motion (from an algorithm), finding further evidence that humans can distinguish between these motion types and that, contrary to our hypothesis, non-biological swarm motion results in significantly faster response times. Second, we compare HiveFive to four other techniques and show that it not only results in fast response times but also has the smallest negative effect on immersion.