Under the Movement of Head: Evaluating Visual Attention in Immersive Virtual Reality Environment

A method to measure what and how deep the user can perceive in immersive virtual reality environments is proposed. A preliminary user study was carried out to verify that user gaze behaviors have some specific differences in immersive virtual reality environments compared with that in traditional non-immersive virtual reality environments base on 2D monitors and interactive hardware. Analyzed from the user study result, the user gaze behavior in immersive virtual reality environments is more likely to move their head to let interested object locates in the center of the view, while in non-immersive virtual reality environments the user tends to move their own eyes and only move the avatar's head when necessary. Base on this finding, a quantitative equation is proposed to measure the user's attention in immersive virtual reality environments. It can be used into a quality evaluate system to help designers find out design issues in the scene that reduce the effectiveness of the narrative.