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Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems

Consumer virtual reality (VR) systems are increasingly being deployed in research to study sensorimotor behaviors, but properties of such systems require verification before being used as scientific tools. The ‘motion-to-photon’ latency (the lag between a user making a movement and the movement bein...

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Autores principales: Warburton, Matthew, Mon-Williams, Mark, Mushtaq, Faisal, Morehead, J. Ryan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10616216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36217006
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-01983-5
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author Warburton, Matthew
Mon-Williams, Mark
Mushtaq, Faisal
Morehead, J. Ryan
author_facet Warburton, Matthew
Mon-Williams, Mark
Mushtaq, Faisal
Morehead, J. Ryan
author_sort Warburton, Matthew
collection PubMed
description Consumer virtual reality (VR) systems are increasingly being deployed in research to study sensorimotor behaviors, but properties of such systems require verification before being used as scientific tools. The ‘motion-to-photon’ latency (the lag between a user making a movement and the movement being displayed within the display) is a particularly important metric as temporal delays can degrade sensorimotor performance. Extant approaches to quantifying this measure have involved the use of bespoke software and hardware and produce a single measure of latency and ignore the effect of the motion prediction algorithms used in modern VR systems. This reduces confidence in the generalizability of the results. We developed a novel, system-independent, high-speed camera-based latency measurement technique to co-register real and virtual controller movements, allowing assessment of how latencies change through a movement. We applied this technique to measure the motion-to-photon latency of controller movements in the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, and Valve Index, using the Unity game engine and SteamVR. For the start of a sudden movement, all measured headsets had mean latencies between 21 and 42 ms. Once motion prediction could account for the inherent delays, the latency was functionally reduced to 2–13 ms, and our technique revealed that this reduction occurs within ~25–58 ms of movement onset. Our findings indicate that sudden accelerations (e.g., movement onset, impacts, and direction changes) will increase latencies and lower spatial accuracy. Our technique allows researchers to measure these factors and determine the impact on their experimental design before collecting sensorimotor data from VR systems. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13428-022-01983-5.
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spelling pubmed-106162162023-11-01 Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems Warburton, Matthew Mon-Williams, Mark Mushtaq, Faisal Morehead, J. Ryan Behav Res Methods Article Consumer virtual reality (VR) systems are increasingly being deployed in research to study sensorimotor behaviors, but properties of such systems require verification before being used as scientific tools. The ‘motion-to-photon’ latency (the lag between a user making a movement and the movement being displayed within the display) is a particularly important metric as temporal delays can degrade sensorimotor performance. Extant approaches to quantifying this measure have involved the use of bespoke software and hardware and produce a single measure of latency and ignore the effect of the motion prediction algorithms used in modern VR systems. This reduces confidence in the generalizability of the results. We developed a novel, system-independent, high-speed camera-based latency measurement technique to co-register real and virtual controller movements, allowing assessment of how latencies change through a movement. We applied this technique to measure the motion-to-photon latency of controller movements in the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, and Valve Index, using the Unity game engine and SteamVR. For the start of a sudden movement, all measured headsets had mean latencies between 21 and 42 ms. Once motion prediction could account for the inherent delays, the latency was functionally reduced to 2–13 ms, and our technique revealed that this reduction occurs within ~25–58 ms of movement onset. Our findings indicate that sudden accelerations (e.g., movement onset, impacts, and direction changes) will increase latencies and lower spatial accuracy. Our technique allows researchers to measure these factors and determine the impact on their experimental design before collecting sensorimotor data from VR systems. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13428-022-01983-5. Springer US 2022-10-10 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10616216/ /pubmed/36217006 http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-01983-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Warburton, Matthew
Mon-Williams, Mark
Mushtaq, Faisal
Morehead, J. Ryan
Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems
title Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems
title_full Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems
title_fullStr Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems
title_full_unstemmed Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems
title_short Measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems
title_sort measuring motion-to-photon latency for sensorimotor experiments with virtual reality systems
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10616216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36217006
http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-01983-5
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