The Illusion of Being Located in Dynamic Virtual Environments. Can Eye Movement Parameters Predict Spatial Presence?

Attention allocation towards the mediated environment is assumed to be a necessary precondition to feel localized in a virtual world. In presence research, however, the potential of eye movement research has not been fully exploited so far. In this study, participants (N=44) rode on a virtual roller coaster simulation. We compare participants scoring high versus low on presence. During the ride, the eye movements and subjective ex post presence judgments were assessed. We found high sensations of presence to be associated with fewer fixations and a tendency towards longer fixation durations. In contrast to the immersive tendency trait, eye movement parameters can predict presence

Evaluation of head-free eye tracking as an input device for air traffic control

International audienceThe purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility to integrate a free head motion eye-tracking system as input device in air traffic control (ATC) activity. Sixteen participants used an eye tracker to select targets displayed on a screen as quickly and accurately as possible. We assessed the impact of the presence of visual feedback about gaze position and the method of target selection on selection performance under different difficulty levels induced by variations in target size and target-to-target separation. We tend to consider that the combined use of gaze dwell-time selection and continuous eye-gaze feedback was the best condition as it suits naturally with gaze displacement over the ATC display and free the hands of the controller, despite a small cost in terms of selection speed. In addition, target size had a greater impact on accuracy and selection time than target distance. These findings provide guidelines on possible further implementation of eye tracking in ATC everyday activity