The Scene Camera Projects allows Pro Lab to support studies where subjects observe or interact with stationary physical scenes or objects. These types of study provide a stronger immersion experience to the subjects and improve the ecological validity of the findings, than studies that use a 2D stimulus presentation on a screen (Tonkin et al. 2011 – use of physical shelves vs. images of shelfs in packaging design studies; and Woods et al. 2010 – investigating infant object representation with 3D physical stimuli). On the other hand, the setup is more complex than a standard screen based study, as it requires extra configuration steps with the eye tracker and the inclusion and configuration of an external scene camera to record the scenes and objects.
The table below summarizes a few of the factors you need to consider before deciding to use a scene camera setup.
Screen based image or video - 2D | Scene camera with physical scene - 3D | Glasses with physical scene - 3D | |
Setup process | automatic (with native or supported screen sizes) | manual | automatic |
Accuracy | higher | lower | higher |
Precision | depends on tracker | depends on tracker | high |
% of population that can be tracked | higher | higher | lower (does not fit on small infants heads) |
Ecological validity & immersion | lower | higher | higher |
Figure 1. In this example of a scene camera setup, the external camera is located close to the line of sight of the test subject.
Check out the video and get an overview of the setup process and subsequent data analysis options.
Tonkin, C., Ouzts, A.D. & Duchowski, A.T. (2011). Eye Tracking Within the Packaging Design Workflow: Interaction with Physical and Virtual Shelves. Proceeding
NGCA '11 Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Novel Gaze-Controlled Applications. May 26-27, 2011, Karlskrona, Sweden.
Woods, R. J., Wilcox, T., Armstrong, J., & Alexander, G. (2010). Infants’ Representations of 3-Dimensional Occluded Objects. Infant Behavior & Development, 33(4), 663–671.