Inducing joint attention between users by visual guidance with blur effects

Attracting a learner's attention towards desired regions is imperative for immersive training applications. However, direct view manipulation can induce cybesickness and overt visual cues decrease immersion and distract from the training process. We propose and evaluate a technique to subtly and effortlessly guide the follower's visual attention, by blurring their field of view based on the leader's head orientation. We compared the performance of our technique against a cross-shaped head gaze indicator in alignment of moving viewport and object searching tasks. Results suggest that our technique can prompt joint attention between users in shared perspective virtual reality systems, with less induced cybersickness, workload and distraction.