Perceptual evaluation of synthetic gaze jitter

Krzysztof Krejtz , Andrew Duchowski , Heng Zhou , Sophie Jörg , Anna Niedzielska

Abstract

Eye movements are an essential part of non-verbal behavior. Non-player characters, as they occur in many games, communicate with the player through dialogue and non-verbal behavior and can have a strong influence on player experience or even on gameplay. In this paper, we evaluate a procedural model designed to synthesize the subtleties of eye motion. More specifically, our model adds microsaccadic jitter and pupil unrest both modeled by 1/fα or pink noise to the saccadic main sequence. In a series of perceptual two-alternative forced-choice experiments, we explore the perceived naturalness of different parameters of pink noise by comparing synthesized motions to rendered motion of recorded eye movements at extreme close shot and close shot distances. Our results show that, on average, animations based on a procedural model with pink noise were perceived and evaluated as highly natural, whereas data-driven motion without any jitter or with unfiltered jitter were consistently selected as the least natural in appearance.