ARWithDistance: Distance Awareness in Off-Screen Visualization Techniques for AR Applications

It is common in mobile augmented reality (AR) applications to use clues or visual markers to indicate the location of points of interest (POIs) that are outside the current field of view of the camera or screen. These clues can take many forms, such as arrows, symbols, or text labels, and are typically overlaid on the camera view or displayed in a separate area of the screen. Visual clues indicating relevance, orientation, and distance to off-screen objects help users better understand their surroundings and explore or navigate more effectively. This paper compares 4 proposed focus+context techniques with visual clues to off-screen POIs' position and distance: a modified 2D arrow and three arc-based representations. Moreover, we apply already known techniques to represent POIs' relevance and to solve the visual cluttering in environments with many POIs. The results of a user study revealed that the participants preferred the 2D arrow technique and could find the most relevant POI faster with it, even with a large number of objects. However, the EqualArc technique reduces error rates for POI selection accuracy.