Impact of AR Display Context Switching and Focal Distance Switching on Human Performance: Replication on an AR Haploscope

In augmented reality (AR) environments, information is often distributed between real and virtual contexts, and often appears at different distances from the user. Therefore, to integrate the information, users must repeatedly switch context and refocus the eyes. Previously, Gabbard, Mehra, and Swan (2018) examined these issues, using a text-based visual search task and a monocular optical see-through AR display. In this work, the authors report a replication of this earlier experiment, using a custom-built AR haploscope. The successful replication, on a very different display, is consistent with the hypothesis that the findings are a general property of AR.