The Eye-Head Mover Spectrum: Modelling Individual and Population Head Movement Tendencies in Virtual Reality

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Hu, Jinghui, Sidenmark, Ludwig, Lee, Hock Siang, Gellersen, Hans
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Hu, Jinghui
Sidenmark, Ludwig
Lee, Hock Siang
Gellersen, Hans
author_facet Hu, Jinghui
Sidenmark, Ludwig
Lee, Hock Siang
Gellersen, Hans
contents People differ in how much they move their head versus their eyes when shifting gaze, yet such tendencies remain largely unexplored in HCI. We introduce head movement tendencies as a fundamental dimension of individual difference in VR and provide a quantitative account of their population-level distribution. Using a 360° video free-viewing dataset (N=87), we model head contributions to gaze shifts with a hinge-based parametric function, revealing a spectrum of strategies from eye-movers to head-movers. We then conduct a user study (N=28) combining 360° video viewing with a short controlled task using gaze targets. While parameter values differ across tasks, individuals show partial alignment in their relative positions within the population, indicating that tendencies are meaningful but shaped by context. Our findings establish head movement tendencies as an important concept for VR and highlight implications for adaptive systems such as foveated rendering, viewport alignment, and multi-user experience design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_06164
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Eye-Head Mover Spectrum: Modelling Individual and Population Head Movement Tendencies in Virtual Reality
Hu, Jinghui
Sidenmark, Ludwig
Lee, Hock Siang
Gellersen, Hans
Human-Computer Interaction
People differ in how much they move their head versus their eyes when shifting gaze, yet such tendencies remain largely unexplored in HCI. We introduce head movement tendencies as a fundamental dimension of individual difference in VR and provide a quantitative account of their population-level distribution. Using a 360° video free-viewing dataset (N=87), we model head contributions to gaze shifts with a hinge-based parametric function, revealing a spectrum of strategies from eye-movers to head-movers. We then conduct a user study (N=28) combining 360° video viewing with a short controlled task using gaze targets. While parameter values differ across tasks, individuals show partial alignment in their relative positions within the population, indicating that tendencies are meaningful but shaped by context. Our findings establish head movement tendencies as an important concept for VR and highlight implications for adaptive systems such as foveated rendering, viewport alignment, and multi-user experience design.
title The Eye-Head Mover Spectrum: Modelling Individual and Population Head Movement Tendencies in Virtual Reality
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06164