Comparison of Virtual-Real Integration Efficiency between Light Field and Conventional Near-Eye AR Displays

Most existing wearable displays for augmented reality (AR) have only one fixed focal plane and hence suffer from vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC). In contrast, light field displays allow users to accurately focus at any depth free of VAC. This paper presents a series of text-based visual search tasks to systematically and quantitatively compare a near-eye light field display with a conventional AR display, specifically in regards to how participants wearing such displays would perform in a virtual-real integration task. Participant performance is evaluated by the speed and accuracy they can complete a trial. The results show that the light field AR glasses lead to significantly higher user performance than the conventional AR glasses. In addition, 80% of the participants prefer the light field AR glasses over the conventional AR glasses.