A comparison of eye-head coordination between virtual and physical realities

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Past research has shown that humans exhibit certain eye-head responses to the appearance of visual stimuli, and these natural reactions change during different activities. Our work builds upon these past observations by offering new insight to how humans behave in Virtual Reality (VR) compared to Physical Reality (PR). Using eye- and head- tracking technology, and by conducting a study on two groups of users - participants in VR or PR - we identify how often these natural responses are observed in both environments. We find that users statistically move their heads more often when viewing stimuli in VR than in PR, and VR users also move their heads more in the presence of text. We open a discussion for identifying the HWD factors that cause this difference, as this may not only affect predictive models using eye movements as features, but also VR user experience overall.