Virtual and Augmented Reality: Innovation or Old Wine in New Bottles?

Abstract

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) have experienced a tremendous increase in attraction and application. Nowadays, VR-headsets are commercially available. They provide a much better resolution and much wider field-of view for a fraction of the original cost. The same development can be observed for AR, including smartphone or hand-held AR solutions. But beyond the fun of new technology, VR and AR are often lacking of a professional use case. They still fail to show their benefits and provide data for a detailed cost/benefit analysis. And with the growing dispersion and implementation into professional applications in modern industrial processes, various training and education applications, or advanced distant learning, there is an increasing need for concrete results and recommendations for usability and human-technology interaction.

They can be taken and applied from early studies in the area of Human Factors and Ergonomics. Although some of them are not important because of higher technological capabilities and performance (e.g. latency, resolution or field-of-view), most of them are still valid. They begin with cue conflicts, visual and multimodal perception and end with system performance, workload and simulator sickness.

This paper presents the relevance of HF/E for a meaningful, effective and efficient application of this technology. It shows also that the topic itself is not totally new and many requirements and results can be transferred from existing studies.