Dynamics of eye dominance behavior in virtual reality

Abstract

Prior research has shown that sighting eye dominance is a dynamic behavior and dependent on horizontal viewing angle. Virtual reality (VR) offers high flexibility and control for studying eye movement and human behavior, yet eye dominance has not been given significant attention within this domain. In this work, we replicate Khan and Crawford’s (2001) original study in VR to confirm their findings within this specific context. Additionally, this study extends its scope to study alignment with objects presented at greater depth in the visual field. Our results align with previous results, remaining consistent when targets are presented at greater distances in the virtual scene. Using greater target distances presents opportunities to investigate alignment with objects at varying depths, providing greater flexibility for the design of methods that infer eye dominance from interaction in VR.

Introduction to the Special Thematic Issue "Virtual Reality and Eye Tracking"

“…Overall, the articles of the present special thematic issue showcase a variety of use cases and applications of VR-based eye tracking in research and practice. They show how eye tracking in VR can be and has already been used to advance research in various fields, including research on the human visual system (Beitner et al, 2023;Prummer et al, 2024) and cognitive processes (Pettersson et al, 2018;Słowiński et al, 2022;Souchet et al, 2022), with important practical applications, for example in visual field examinations (Portengen et al, 2022) and assessment of visual acuity (Kim et al, 2016;, military training (Harris et al, 2023) and for the development of new technological systems (Hebbar et al, 2023). Nevertheless, these articles also indicate there are still many open technical and methodological questions (Freytag et al, 2023;Pielage et al, 2023;Schuetz & Fiehler, 2022) that need to be addressed in future research to establish the required standards for scientific practice and an empirical basis for valid and reliable applications in various fields.…”