Visual realism and presence in a virtual reality game

Virtual Reality (VR) has finally entered the homes of consumers, and a large number of the available applications are games. This paper presents a between-subjects study (n=50) exploring if visual realism (polygon count and texture resolution) affects presence during a scenario involving gameplay, graphics, and controls that, contrary to much existing research, resemble commercially available VR games. The results suggest that participants exposed to a higher degree of visual realism experienced a stronger sensation of presence, as assessed by means of self-reports, and physiological measures revealed that higher visual realism also was accompanied by stronger fear responses which may be indicative of stronger presence.

[1]  Katerina Mania,et al.  The effect of quality of rendering on user lighting impressions and presence in virtual environments , 2004, VRCAI '04.

[2]  Mel Slater,et al.  Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[3]  Mel Slater,et al.  Depth of Presence in Virtual Environments , 1994, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[4]  Michael Meehan,et al.  Physiological measures of presence in stressful virtual environments , 2002, SIGGRAPH.

[5]  Mel Slater,et al.  The Influence of Dynamic Shadows on Presence in Immersive Virtual Environments , 1995, Virtual Environments.

[6]  Lawrence W. Stark,et al.  The Effects of Pictorial Realism, Delay of Visual Feedback, and Observer Interactivity on the Subjective Sense of Presence , 1996, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[7]  Kai Kunze,et al.  GazeSim: simulating foveated rendering using depth in eye gaze for VR , 2016, SIGGRAPH Posters.

[8]  Paul Zimmons,et al.  The influence of rendering quality on presence and task performance in a virtual environment , 2003, IEEE Virtual Reality, 2003. Proceedings..

[9]  T. Chau,et al.  Comparison of blood volume pulse and skin conductance responses to mental and affective stimuli at different anatomical sites , 2011, Physiological measurement.

[10]  Mel Slater,et al.  An Investigation of Presence Response across Variations in Visual Realism , 2004 .

[11]  Mel Slater,et al.  How Colorful Was Your Day? Why Questionnaires Cannot Assess Presence in Virtual Environments , 2004, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[12]  Stefania Serafin,et al.  The effect of geometric realism on presence in a virtual reality game , 2017, 2017 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR).

[13]  M. Bradley,et al.  Measuring emotion: the Self-Assessment Manikin and the Semantic Differential. , 1994, Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry.

[14]  Mel Slater,et al.  Visual Realism Enhances Realistic Response in an Immersive Virtual Environment , 2009, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[15]  Mel Slater,et al.  Simulating virtual environments within virtual environments as the basis for a psychophysics of presence , 2010, SIGGRAPH 2010.

[16]  Yiyu Cai,et al.  Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGGRAPH international conference on Virtual Reality continuum and its applications in industry , 2004 .