Simulated Visual Search

Visual Search Tasks

This series of experiments focused on the utilization of the Unity game engine to create naturalistic environments to serve as a testbed for the introduction of new technology, in this case, information displays (AR and auditory presentation).

• From both a theoretical and applied standpoint, it is imperative to understand the performance tradeoffs when implementing new technologies and simulated environments can be used to emulate risky or costly scenarios.

• Participants performed a series of dual-tasks which comprised of visual search and a word recall task (presented audibly or visually) within a simulated environment created in Unity.

• Results indicated that a dual-task decrement was observed in each of these studies, which provided evidence that such human performance in these environments could be understood in a similar manner to traditional studies of a similar kind.

 Here are the studies composing this series:

1. Visual search with a HUD

2. Visual search with auditory information presentation

3. 2D visual search with a HUD