Objective and subjective assessment of stereoscopically separated labels in augmented reality

We present a new technique for managing visual clutter caused by overlapping labels in complex information displays. This technique, label layering, utilizes stereoscopic disparity as a means to segregate labels in depth for increased legibility and clarity. By distributing overlapping labels in depth, we have found that selection time during a visual search task in situations with high levels of visual overlap is reduced by 4s or 24%. Our data show that the stereoscopically based depth order of the labels must be correlated with the distance order of their corresponding objects, for practical benefits. An algorithm using our label layering technique accordingly could be an alternative to traditional label placement algorithms that avoid label overlap at the cost of distracting view plane motion, symbology dimming or label size reduction. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.