Empirical Evaluation of the Effects of Visuo-Auditory Perceptual Information on Head Oriented Tracking of Dynamic Objects in VR

As virtual reality (VR) technology sees more use in various fields, there is a greater need to understand how to effectively design dynamic virtual environments. As of now, there is still uncertainty in how well users of a VR system are capable of tracking moving targets in a virtual space. In this work, we examined the influence of sensory modality and visual feedback on the accuracy of headgaze moving target tracking. To this end, a between subjects study was conducted wherein participants would receive targets that were visual, auditory, or audiovisual. Each participant performed two blocks of experimental trials, with a calibration block in between. Results indicate that audiovisual targets promoted greater improvement in tracking performance over single-modality targets, and that audio-only targets are more difficult to track than those of other modalities.