Comparison of User Performance and Experience Between Light Field and Conventional AR Glasses

Light field AR glasses can provide better visual comfort than conventional AR glasses; however, studies on user performance comparison between them are notably scarce. In this article, we present a systematic method employing a serial visual search task without confounding factors to quantify and compare the user performance and experience between these two types of AR glasses at two different viewing distances, 30 cm and 60 cm, and in two modes, purely virtual VR mode and virtual-real integration AR mode. The results show that the light field AR glasses led to a significantly faster reaction speed and higher accuracy than the conventional AR glasses at 30 cm in the AR mode. The participant feedback also shows that the former led to better virtual-real integration. User performance and experience of the light field AR glasses remained consistent across different viewing distances. Although the conventional AR glasses had a better search efficiency than the light field AR glasses at 60 cm in both AR and VR modes, it had more negative feedback from the participants. Overall, the design of this experiment successfully allows us to quantify the effect of VAC and underscores the strength of the evaluation method.