Influence of hearing your steps and environmental sounds in VR while walking

Presence, the feeling of ‘being there’ in a virtual environment (VR), is seen as a basic requirement for VR environments.In a controlled laboratory experiment, the effect of auditory components of VR on presence was studied. Participants wore a head-mounted display (Oculus Rift DK2) and noise-cancelling headphones (Bose Quiet Comfort 25) while walking on a treadmill for 5 minutes per experimental condition. They were visually presented with a rural virtual reality scenery. The audio presentation was varied in a 2×2 within-subjects design with a "Soundscape" (birds, wind, church bells) and/or "Footsteps" (played back when the sensors detected a step), either being presented or not. After each condition, the subjects filled out the IPQ Presence Questionnaire.Data analysis was conducted on 40 participants who completed each of the four sound conditions in random order. The results of the statistical analysis show that (a) a single-item presence scale (percentage of ‘perfect’ presence), (b) the IPQ presence scale G1, and (c) the IPQ realism scale all detected significant effects of playing back footstep sounds, and even larger effects due to providing a soundscape in VR. By contrast, IPQ spatial presence was not increased and IPQ involvement was only increased by providing the environmental soundscape.To sum up, the self-generated sounds had significant effects on the feeling of "being there" and on perceived realism, while the effect of the soundscape tended to be even more powerful.

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