Accuracy Evaluation of Touch Tasks in Commodity Virtual and Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Displays

TL;DR

This study evaluates the finger tracking accuracy of various consumer VR and AR head-mounted displays during touch-based tasks, providing insights for selecting suitable systems in research and practice.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive accuracy comparison of popular off-the-shelf VR and AR HMDs for touch tasks, including experiments with human and robotic participants.

Findings

Vive Pro has lower accuracy than Oculus Quest and Leap Motion.

HoloLens 2 outperforms Magic Leap in accuracy.

Results inform system choice for touch-based AR/VR applications.

Abstract

An increasing number of consumer-oriented head-mounted displays (HMD) for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) are capable of finger and hand tracking. We report on the accuracy of off-the-shelf VR and AR HMDs when used for touch-based tasks such as pointing or drawing. Specifically, we report on the finger tracking accuracy of the VR head-mounted displays Oculus Quest, Vive Pro and the Leap Motion controller, when attached to a VR HMD, as well as the finger tracking accuracy of the AR head-mounted displays Microsoft HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap. We present the results of two experiments in which we compare the accuracy for absolute and relative pointing tasks using both human participants and a robot. The results suggest that HTC Vive has a lower spatial accuracy than the Oculus Quest and Leap Motion and that the Microsoft HoloLens 2 provides higher spatial accuracy than Magic Leap One. These findings can serve as decision support for researchers and practitioners in choosing which systems to use in the future.