The Importance of Cueing While Visually Searching a 360 Degree Environment for Multiple Targets in the Presence of Distractors

Visually searching for objects is an everyday task. In many contexts, people must visually search for multiple objects at the same time while avoiding distractor objects, such as triage during a mass casualty incident. While many prior augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) studies have investigated cues to aid in visual search tasks, few have investigated cues in contexts involving multiple targets and distractors with a full 360° effective field of regard (EFOR). Individually, multiple targets, distractors, and a full 360° EFOR each add complexity to visual search; when combined, they compound the difficulty even further. In this paper, we present such a study that compares three common types of visual cues (2D Wedge, 3D Arrow, and Gaze Line) to a baseline condition with no cueing for a 360° visual search task. Our results reinforce the importance of providing some type of cue, with the Gaze Line design being particularly beneficial. We discuss the potential implications of these findings for designing cues specifically for such complex visual search tasks.