Beyond the Gaze : Using Eye-Tracking and Surveys to Understand VR Stories

Sammanfattning

Virtual reality (VR) allows users to freely direct their attention within immersive environments, which creates challenges for narrative-driven experiences, as the users might miss important story elements. This study investigates whether eye-tracking data, as a measure of visual attention and registered gaze, reflects the same narrative engagement as post-experience surveys when analysing how players follow a story in VR. For this study, a narrative-driven prototype was developed in Unity using the Meta Quest Pro headset and an eye-tracking logging system. Ten participants experienced the prototype while their gaze behaviour was being recorded, followed by a post-experience survey focused on perceived object importance and narrative recall. The results showed differences between objective eye-tracking behaviours and subjective recall. The objects with high dwell times were not always perceived as important, while key narrative objects sometimes received limited recorded gaze time while being remembered by participants. These findings indicate that eye-tracking data and post-experience surveys may capture different aspects of narrative engagement in VR experiences. Given the limited sample size of ten participants, these findings are exploratory and should be interpreted with caution.