9.2: Invited Paper: The Evaluation and Testing on Visual Fatigue and Comfort Between Different Types of VR HMDS and Their Corresponding Pad or Phone

Abstract

In the same indoor lighting conditions, we compare the differences in visual fatigue and comfort between VR devices and smartphone or tablets by the changes in visual fatigue, comfort and visual function of several different VR devices and their corresponding phone or pad before and after watching the same content. The test task is watching the same video, and the test task time for each condition is 40 minutes. The main measures indexes include critical fusion frequency, contrast sensitivity, stereoscopic function, diopter, accommodation and visual fatigue perception scale, etc. One group of test users is students aged 21‐35, and the other group is students aged 9‐15. The results show that there are no significant differences in critical fusion frequency, the contrast sensitivity and the stereoscopic visual indicators between the glasses VR device and the corresponding smartphone screen. But there are significant differences in critical fusion frequency before and after the task (ps<0.05), indicating that visual fatigue occurred after the task. Whereas the other smartphone device and pad after watching video have produced a certain degree of eye tightness and headache. However, the differences between two samples in subjective visual fatigue, comfort, refractive degree and accommodation, contrast sensitivity and so on are not significant. In terms of critical fusion frequency, the decrease in critical fusion frequency of smartphone devices is greater than that of Pad, indicating that the use of smartphone devices has a greater impact on users' ability to identify critical fusion frequency than the use of iPad. The results show that there are a lot of developments in the technology of VR‐HMDs, and their effects on users' visual fatigue and comfort are comparable to those of tablet devices, but they are still different from tablet devices in some aspects.