TY - GEN
T1 - Measuring Audio-Visual Latencies in Virtual Reality Systems
AU - Fucci, Victoria
AU - Liu, Jinqi
AU - You, Yunjia
AU - Cuijpers, Raymond H.
PY - 2024/3/20
Y1 - 2024/3/20
N2 - In virtual reality (VR) systems, delays may occur while the signal passes through hardware and software components, thus causing asynchrony or even cybersickness, as a result. To better understand and control the role of delays in VR experiments, we tested an accessible method for measuring audio and visual end-to-end latency between game engines (Unity and Unreal), head-mounted displays (HMD) (Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest 2) and vertical synchronisation (V-sync) setting (on/off). The measuring setup consisted of the microcontroller, a dedicated serial port, a microphone, a light sensor and an oscilloscope. The measurements showed that Unreal Engine with Oculus Rift had ≈ 16 ms less visual delay and ≈ 33 ms less audio delay than Oculus Quest 2. The Unity Engine with Oculus Rift had ≈ 22 ms less visual delay and ≈ 39 ms less audio delay than Oculus Quest 2. These values may differ between systems, but they are above the discrimination thresholds. No differences were found for the V-sync on/off parameter. Compared to the Unity Engine, the Unreal Engine showed much lower visual latency performance and significantly lower audio latency. In addition, Oculus Rift's audio and visual latency performance had lower delays than Oculus Quest 2; therefore, using Oculus Rift is advisable in VR research where lower latencies are essential, even though Oculus Quest 2 is a newer version of the HMD. Our approach provides a convenient way to measure audio and visual end-to-end latency in VR without a strong engineering background.
AB - In virtual reality (VR) systems, delays may occur while the signal passes through hardware and software components, thus causing asynchrony or even cybersickness, as a result. To better understand and control the role of delays in VR experiments, we tested an accessible method for measuring audio and visual end-to-end latency between game engines (Unity and Unreal), head-mounted displays (HMD) (Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest 2) and vertical synchronisation (V-sync) setting (on/off). The measuring setup consisted of the microcontroller, a dedicated serial port, a microphone, a light sensor and an oscilloscope. The measurements showed that Unreal Engine with Oculus Rift had ≈ 16 ms less visual delay and ≈ 33 ms less audio delay than Oculus Quest 2. The Unity Engine with Oculus Rift had ≈ 22 ms less visual delay and ≈ 39 ms less audio delay than Oculus Quest 2. These values may differ between systems, but they are above the discrimination thresholds. No differences were found for the V-sync on/off parameter. Compared to the Unity Engine, the Unreal Engine showed much lower visual latency performance and significantly lower audio latency. In addition, Oculus Rift's audio and visual latency performance had lower delays than Oculus Quest 2; therefore, using Oculus Rift is advisable in VR research where lower latencies are essential, even though Oculus Quest 2 is a newer version of the HMD. Our approach provides a convenient way to measure audio and visual end-to-end latency in VR without a strong engineering background.
KW - Audio-visual
KW - End-to-end latency
KW - Head-mounted display
KW - System delays
KW - VR
KW - Virtual reality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85190647088&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-99-9018-4_10
DO - 10.1007/978-981-99-9018-4_10
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 978-981-99-9017-7
T3 - Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies (SIST)
SP - 137
EP - 149
BT - AI Technologies and Virtual Reality
A2 - Nakamatsu, Kazumi
A2 - Patnaik, Srikanta
A2 - Kountchev, Roumen
PB - Springer
T2 - 7th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality, AIVR 2023
Y2 - 21 July 2023 through 23 July 2023
ER -