Location-Aware Virtual Reality for Situational Awareness On the Road

Jingyi Li, Alexandra Mayer, Florian Müller, Andrii Matviienko, Andreas Butz

SUI 2023

Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction

TL;DR

What we did: We designed a location-aware Virtual Reality system that incorporates real-world cues during mobile interactions in vehicles, using two visualizations based on points of interest.

What we found: We found that while continuous live street views lead to decreased presence in Virtual Reality, incorporating location-based cues when passing specific points significantly preserves user experience while improving situational awareness.

Takeaway: Our work contributes practical strategies for enhancing user situational awareness in mobile Virtual Reality environments, suggesting that a balance between immersion and reality awareness can be achieved by dynamically presenting real-world information.

Abstract

When future passengers are immersed in Virtual Reality (VR), the resulting disconnection from the physical world may degrade their situational awareness on the road. We propose incorporating real-world cues into virtual experiences when passing specific locations to address this. We designed two visualizations using points of interest (POIs), street names alone or combined with live street views. We compared them to two baselines, persistently displaying live cues (Always Live) or no cues (Always VR). In a field study (N=17), participants estimated their locations while exposed to VR entertainment during car rides. The results show that adding environmental cues inevitably degrades VR presence compared to Always VR. However, POI-triggered Text&Live preserves VR presence better than Always Live and attracts user attention to the road more than POI-triggered Text. We discuss situational awareness challenges for using mobile VR on the road and potential incorporation strategies across transport contexts.