Examining the equivalence of simulated and real AR on a visual following and identification task

Mixed Reality (MR) simulation, in which a Virtual Reality (VR) system is used to simulate both the real and virtual components of an Augmented Reality (AR) system, has been proposed as a method for evaluating AR systems with greater levels of experimental control. However, factors such as the latency of the MR simulator may impact the validity of experimental results obtained with MR simulation. We present a study evaluating the effects of simulator latency on the equivalence of results from an MR simulator and a real AR system. We designed an AR experiment which required the participants to visually follow a virtual pipe around a small room filled with real targets and to find and identify the targets which were intersected by the pipe. We show that, with a 95% confidence interval, the results from all three simulated AR conditions fall well within one standard deviation of the real AR case.