Reading text in an immersive head-mounted display: An investigation into displaying desktop interfaces in a 3D virtual environment

This paper describes an experiment conducted as part of a larger project investigating the possibilities of using a virtual environment for users performing day-to-day computing tasks. The experiment is a user study analyzing the performance of reading tasks typical of a general purpose computing environment conducted in immersive virtual reality headsets. Results of this study are evaluated, and suggest that reading tasks can be performed with near equivalent performance in the virtual environment when compared to performance values obtained from baseline tasks on a traditional display.