Effects of field of regard and stereoscopy and the validity of MR simulation for visual analysis of scientific data

We report the findings of a study designed to evaluate the effect of stereopsis and field of regard (FOR) in two different mixed reality (MR) simulation platforms: a head-mounted display (HMD) and a CAVE. We compared the performance of participants on two levels of stereopsis (mono and stereo) and two levels of FOR (90 degrees and 270 degrees) using a variety of scientific visualization tasks. Among the findings, we observed that not all the effects were consistent between the platforms. Stereo alone or in combination with higher FOR improved completion time on both platforms. However, adding stereo solely reduced the accuracy of the participants on the CAVE and improved on the HMD. Our findings extend prior knowledge on the contribution of visual fidelity components and suggests potential limits on MR simulation between platforms.