Looking From a Different Angle: Placing Head-Worn Displays Near the Nose

Yukun Song, Parth Arora, Srikanth T. Varadharajan, Rajandeep Singh, Malcolm Haynes, Thad Starner

Abstract: Head-worn augmented reality displays such as Engo Eyewear avoid placing the virtual image in the user’s primary position of gaze (PPOG) to allow a clear view of the user’s primary task. Several studies suggest that horizontally offsetting the virtual image toward the ear provides good performance and comfort during different types of tasks. Less research focuses on offsetting the image toward the nose. Extending a previous study with displays positioned at 0°, +10°, +20°, and +30° (defining toward the ear as the positive direction), we run two studies each with four conditions and 12 participants (24 participants total) comparing user comfort at -30°, -20°, -10°, and 0° and -15°, 0°, +15°, and +25°. We follow the previous study’s procedures, using a 30-minute reading task and a video display terminal as an emulated right-eye monocular display with a smartphone-sized field of view (FOV). Comparing the results from all three studies suggests that reading on displays with pixels between -24.6° and +19.6° may be comfortable, with users tolerating negative offsets better than positive.