Evaluating presence in low-cost Virtual Reality display systems for undergraduate education

Virtual reality (VR) is an exciting field that receives little attention in most undergraduate Computer Science programs. Historically, one of the barriers to teaching VR has been the cost of appropriate equipment; however, a number of economically priced systems have been proposed recently for undergraduate training and research projects in VR. In this paper, we discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of these low-cost stereo display systems and then describe a study designed to assess the subjective ratings of presence that each system provides. Presence, a characteristic of many VR applications, is the feeling of being in a virtual world when you are physically located somewhere else. In our study, the factor that seemed to have the greatest impact on presence was the field of view provided by the system. However, we found that all the systems provided subjective presence levels significantly higher than a standard computer monitor, suggesting that all the systems could form the basis of an undergraduate VR laboratory.