Change in Blink Rate in the Metaverse VR HMD and AR Glasses Environment

Jungho Kim; Leehwan Hwang; Soonchul Kwon; Seunghyun Lee

doi:10.3390/ijerph19148551

Change in Blink Rate in the Metaverse VR HMD and AR Glasses Environment

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 13;19(14):8551. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19148551.

Authors

Jungho Kim¹, Leehwan Hwang², Soonchul Kwon³, Seunghyun Lee⁴

Affiliations

¹ Immersive Content Device Technology Research Center, Kwangwoon University, Seoul 01897, Korea.
² Department of Plasma Bio-Display, Kwangwoon University, Seoul 01897, Korea.
³ Graduate School of Smart Convergence, Kwangwoon University, Seoul 01897, Korea.
⁴ Ingenium College, Kwangwoon University, Seoul 01897, Korea.

Abstract

Blink rate, a major physiological response in humans, directly affects ocular diseases such as keratitis and dry eye. The blink rate in normal eyes appears at a constant frequency of 6-30 times per minute and is constant for each individual. In a previous study, the blink rate decreased when viewing content with high intensity and realism. Therefore, we tried to investigate the change in blink rate when viewing the content in VR HMD (virtual reality head-mounted display) and AR (augmented reality) glasses environments. We compared and analyzed the blink rate in four environments: natural state, viewing monitor, viewing VR HMD, and viewing AR glasses. Twenty-one participants (age, 26.87 ± 3.31 years) viewed the content for 1 min in four environments. One-way repeated ANOVA was used to analyze the blink rate changes. The study showed that the blink rate was decreased in the monitor, VR HMD, and AR glasses environments compared to that in the natural environment. Comparing the VR HMD environment with the AR glasses environment showed that the blink rate decreased in the VR HMD environment. The results of this study can be used for content use safety recommendations (guidelines for safe use of contents due to decreased blink rate) in the VR HMD and AR glasses environments, which are currently attracting attention in the metaverse.

Keywords: AR glasses; VR HMD; blink rate; guideline; metaverse.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Attention
Augmented Reality*
Humans
Smart Glasses*
Virtual Reality*
Young Adult

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (IITP-2022-2020-0-01846) supervised by the IITP (Institute for Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation). This research was supported by Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2020-0-00922, Development of holographic stereogram printing technology based on multi-view imaging). This research is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency (Project Number: R2021040083).