Influence of temporal delay and display update rate in an augmented reality application scenario

In mobile augmented reality (AR) applications, highly complex computing tasks such as position tracking and 3D rendering compete for limited processing resources. This leads to unavoidable system latency in the form of temporal delay and reduced display update rates. In this paper we present a user study on the influence of these system parameters in an AR point'n'click scenario. Our experiment was conducted in a lab environment to collect quantitative data (user performance as well as user perceived ease of use). We can show that temporal delay and update rate both affect user performance and experience but that users are much more sensitive to longer temporal delay than to lower update rates. Moreover, we found that the effects of temporal delay and update rate are not independent as with longer temporal delay, changing update rates tend to have less impact on the ease of use. Furthermore, in some cases user performance can actually increase when reducing the update rate in order to make it compatible to the latency. Our findings indicate that in the development of mobile AR applications, more emphasis should be put on delay reduction than on update rate improvement and that increasing the update rate does not necessarily improve user performance and experience if the temporal delay is significantly higher than the update interval.