Head-Mounted Display Peripheral Content Management via Eye Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
In head-mounted displays, additional content presented to enhance the immersive experience often covers important objects or distracts users, breaking the immersive experience due to its placement within the main field of view.
Innovation Solution
A head-mounted display system with an electronic display divided into central and periphery regions, using eye tracking to determine the user's gaze direction and adjust the visual properties of peripheral content, such as opacity, size, or location, to minimize distraction and enhance visibility when the user focuses on it.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If additional content is presented within the main field of view to enhance immersive experience, then the immersive experience is improved, but the content covers important objects or distracts users, breaking the immersive experience
Solution Approach 1:
The display field of view is segmented into multiple regions including a central region and a periphery region. The periphery region is used to display additional content items without interfering with the central view, thus maintaining immersive experience while providing supplementary information.
Solution Approach 2:
Different visual properties are applied to different regions of the display. The periphery region content is rendered with reduced opacity and smaller size compared to the central region, creating local quality variations that allow peripheral content to be visible yet non-intrusive.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If peripheral content is displayed with reduced opacity to minimize distraction, then the immersive experience is maintained, but the visibility of peripheral content is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The visual properties of peripheral content items are dynamically adjusted based on user eye position. When the user's eye is directed at a content item in the periphery region, the system performs a first change to improve visibility (e.g., increase opacity). When the eye is not directed at the content item, a second change is performed to reduce visibility and minimize distraction.
Solution Approach 2:
An eye tracking system provides feedback about user gaze direction to the content display system. This feedback loop enables real-time adjustment of peripheral content visibility based on actual user attention, optimizing both immersion and information delivery.
3Loss of information
If content items are displayed in the periphery region, then additional information is provided without blocking central view, but the content may not be visible or interactable when user attention is focused elsewhere
Solution Approach 1:
The system prepares peripheral content items for interaction by pre-positioning them in the periphery region with appropriate visual properties. When eye tracking detects user attention on a peripheral content item, the system performs preliminary actions to enhance visibility and enable interaction before the user actually engages with the content.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes visual parameters of peripheral content items based on user eye position and interaction state. Parameters such as opacity, size, and brightness are adjusted to make content both informative when not in use and interactable when needed, resolving the contradiction between information delivery and ease of operation.
Data Source
AI summary
A head-mounted display (HMD) comprises an electronic display having a display region divided into a central region and one or more periphery regions. The central region may correspond to a binocular field of view of the user, while the periphery regions correspond to portions of a monocular field of view. The HMD further comprises an eye tracking system configured to determine a position of an eye of a user of the HMD. The HMD is configured to display a content item within a periphery region of the display that does not interfere with the user's view of content within the central region. In response to a determination by the eye tracking system that the user's eye is directed at the displayed content item within the periphery region, the HMD changes a visual property of the content item.