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A system to measure, control and minimize end-to-end head tracking latency in immersive simulations

Published: 11 December 2011 Publication History

Abstract

System latency (time delay) and its visible consequences are fundamental Virtual Environment (VE) deficiencies that can hamper user perception and performance. This paper presents an immersive simulation system which improves upon current latency measurement and minimization techniques. Hardware used for latency measurements and minimization is assembled based on low-cost and portable equipment, most of them commonly found in an academic facility without reduction in accuracy of measurements. A custom-made mechanism of measuring and minimizing end-to-end head tracking latency in an immersive VE is assembled. The mechanism is based on an oscilloscope comparing two signals. One is generated due to the head-tracker movement by a shaft encoder attached on a servo motor moving the tracker. The other signal is generated by the visual consequences of this movement in the VE using a photodiode attached to the computer monitor. Visualization and application-level control of latency in the VE was implemented using the XVR platform. Minimization processes resulted in almost 50% reduction of initial measured latency. The description of the mechanism by which VE latency is measured and minimized will be essential to guide system countermeasures such as predictive compensation.

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cover image ACM Conferences
VRCAI '11: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Virtual Reality Continuum and Its Applications in Industry
December 2011
617 pages
ISBN:9781450310604
DOI:10.1145/2087756
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 11 December 2011

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Author Tags

  1. latency measurement
  2. minimization
  3. tracking

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  • (2022)Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systemsBehavior Research Methods10.3758/s13428-022-01983-555:7(3658-3678)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2022
  • (2022)A survey of challenges and methods for Quality of Experience assessment of interactive VR applicationsJournal on Multimodal User Interfaces10.1007/s12193-022-00388-016:3(257-291)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2021)Ka-Boom!!! Visually Exploring Latency Measurements for XRExtended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411763.3450379(1-9)Online publication date: 8-May-2021
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  • (2020)Simultaneous Run-Time Measurement of Motion-to-Photon Latency and Latency Jitter2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)10.1109/VR46266.2020.1581339481249(636-644)Online publication date: Mar-2020
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