Towards Balancing Real-World Awareness and VR Immersion in Mobile VR

Virtual Reality (VR) can be used to create immersive infotainment experiences for car passengers. However, not much is known about how to best incorporate the essentials of their surroundings for balancing real-world awareness and immersion. To address this gap, we explored 2D and 3D visual cues of the rear-seat space to notify passengers about different real-world tasks (lower armrest, take cup, close window, and hold handle) during a first-person game in VR. Results from our pilot study (n=19) show that users perceive a lower workload in the task hold handle than all other tasks. They also feel more immersed in VR after completing this task, compared to take cup and close window. Based on our findings, we propose real-world task types, synchronous visual cues, and various input and transition approaches as promising future research directions.