Exploiting binocular rivalry: Presenting different contents on dominant and non-dominant eyes

Abstract

One of the ergonomic issues of wearing see-though displays is binocular rivalry, which is one of visual perception phenomena. Binocular rivalry happens when different images are rendered to each eye. In this paper, we introduce the potential of making use of binocular rivalry rather than mitigating it when a stereo see-through HMD is worn. We designed experiments where major contents were presented on the dominant eyes and minor contents (e.g., menus) were displayed on the non-dominant eyes. According to preliminary tests, presenting different contents on dominant and non-dominant eyes is feasible if both contents do not overlap, or only one of them is bright. Switching brightness was also helpful in attaining user's attention. By presenting different contents on dominant and non-dominant eyes, users could also observe the real environments more conveniently than presenting a single content on both eyes.