Early steps towards understanding text legibility in handheld augmented reality

Over the past decades, augmented reality (AR) has seen vast improvements in graphic displays and mobile tracking capabilities. To our knowledge, handheld AR researcher in text legibility has mostly focused on algorithms for overlaying screen-aligned annotations; no one has yet employed a series of user-based studies to systematically investigate text legibility in handheld AR applications. In this preliminary work, we survey current approaches to text depictions in AR applications and the literature. We have found no single consistent form of displaying text, but see some basic trends emerging. This initial work lays the foundation for examining different text styles in various environments in order to create guidelines for effective text drawing approaches. By assessing current strategies for rendering text labels in handheld AR, we can catalog drawing styles for use in follow-on user-based studies.