XR Reality Check: What Commercial Devices Deliver for Spatial Tracking
Tianyi Hu, Tianyuan Du, Zhehan Qu, Maria Gorlatova

TL;DR
This paper introduces a standardized benchmarking framework for evaluating spatial tracking accuracy in XR devices, revealing significant intra- and inter-device performance variations influenced by environmental and hardware factors.
Contribution
It presents the first comprehensive empirical benchmarking platform for XR tracking devices, including a new testbed, datasets, and open-source evaluation tools.
Findings
Substantial intra-device error variation up to 101% in featureless environments.
Tracking accuracy correlates with visual conditions and motion dynamics.
Performance disparities of up to 2.8× between different XR devices linked to hardware differences.
Abstract
Inaccurate spatial tracking in extended reality (XR) devices leads to virtual object jitter, misalignment, and user discomfort, fundamentally limiting immersive experiences and natural interactions. In this work, we introduce a novel testbed that enables simultaneous, synchronized evaluation of multiple XR devices under identical environmental and kinematic conditions. Leveraging this platform, we present the first comprehensive empirical benchmarking of five state-of-the-art XR devices across 16 diverse scenarios. Our results reveal substantial intra-device performance variation, with individual devices exhibiting up to 101\% increases in error when operating in featureless environments. We also demonstrate that tracking accuracy strongly correlates with visual conditions and motion dynamics. We also observe significant inter-device disparities, with performance differences of up to…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAugmented Reality Applications · Interactive and Immersive Displays · Robotics and Sensor-Based Localization
