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AR / VR (XR) Typography Guidelines v1.0
  • Get Started
  • Basic Concepts
    • Text Rendering
    • Type Anatomy
    • Readability vs Legibility
    • 2D vs 3D Text
  • Reading Experience
    • Visual
      • Visual Acuity
      • Spatial Frequency
      • Crowding
      • Foveal and Parafoveal Reading
    • Technical Aspects
      • Aberrations
      • Field of View
      • Resolution and Refresh Rate
  • Type Classification in XR
    • Introduction
    • Anchoring of Information
    • Placement Zones
    • Types of Text
      • Text in HUD
      • Text for long reading
      • Sticky info text
      • Signage text
      • Responsive text
      • Ticker text
  • Type Selection
    • Font Weight
    • Stroke Contrast
    • Width
    • x-height
    • Counters
    • Joints/Intersections
    • Stroke Endings
    • Letter-Spacing
  • Coming Soon
    • Typesetting
      • Text Size
      • Alignment
      • Length
      • Rhythm
      • Hierarchy
    • Placement
    • Legibility of Typefaces
    • Accessibility
    • Language Support
    • Recommended Typefaces
    • Unity Template
  • ☕️ Support my Research
  • 🙏Acknowledgement
  • 🤝Feedback
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  1. Type Selection

Width

In AR, the viewing angle of the text is not always straight in front of the user as compared to conventional screens. The text can be present in the environment around the user to make it more immersive; this introduces the issue of perspective distortion in the text.

Viewing text at an angle sometimes merges the adjacent strokes and affects the visibility of counters in narrow typefaces making it very hard to distinguish between letters. In traffic signs, information is parsed similarly, at an acute angle. However, the challenge in AR is more complicated since the text presented can be paragraphs as opposed to few words in signages.

Typefaces with wider letter shapes perform well in terms of legibility as most of the text in XR is placed at a distance as compared to conventional mediums.

  • In condensed typefaces, letters become too narrow when viewed at an angle. Which brings the vertical strokes together and causes legibility issues.

  • Condensed typefaces perform poorly in cases of distance viewing too.

  • Wider typefaces perform better in a variety of use cases. But they occupy more space hence fitting a lesser number of characters per line.

  • Letter shapes with a wider body also reduce the effect of halation and irradiation since the space between the strokes is preserved.

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Last updated 3 years ago

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