Increasing Realism of Displayed Vibrating AR Objects through Edge Blurring

Many standard AR devices, such as the HoloLens 2, have limitations in displaying fast motions, like the ones required to visualize moving or vibrating objects. One reason for this is the low computing power compared to other technologies, resulting in frame rate drops. Further, established visualization enhancement methods, such as anti-aliasing, cannot be applied because of their high computational demands. Therefore, we have looked at possible alternatives on the HoloLens 2 for displaying vibrations more realistically as long as these technical limitations exist. We have chosen to examine vibrations as they are widely used for different use cases, like creating feedback, communicating the success of interactions, and generating a better scene understanding. In a user study, three different effects were evaluated against a baseline method, which was the representation of a vibration using a sinus function to calculate the displacement of the object. We found that an effect where the edges of the AR object are blurred (continuously with changing intensity) is perceived as significantly more realistic than other effects and the baseline method.