Foreground/Background Manipulations Affect Presence

A possible relation between vection and presence is discussed. Two experiments examined the hypothesis that “presence” is enhanced by manipulations which facilitate interpreting visual scenes as “background.” A total of 39 participants in two experiments engaged in a pursuit game while in a virtual visual environment generated by an HMD and rated their experience of “presence” on 5 questions. Experiment 1 compared two viewing conditions: visual scene masking at the eye and a paper mask mounted on the screen with the same 60° FOV, and showed that presence was enhanced by eye masking relative to screen masking. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with a double-blind experimental design.

[1]  Woodrow Barfield,et al.  Presence in virtual environments as a function of visual and auditory cues , 1995, Proceedings Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium '95.

[2]  E. Wist,et al.  Foreground and background in dynamic spatial orientation , 1975 .

[3]  Woodrow Barfield,et al.  Presence and performance within virtual environments , 1995 .

[4]  J P Landolt,et al.  Circular Vection as a Function of Foreground-Background Relationships , 1987, Perception.

[5]  H. Wallach.  The perception of motion. , 1959, Scientific American.

[6]  Hideo Kusaka,et al.  Psychophysical Analysis of the “Sensation of Reality” Induced by a Visual Wide-Field Display , 1980 .

[7]  James O. Larimer,et al.  Studies of the field-of-view/resolution tradeoff in virtual-reality systems , 1992, Electronic Imaging.

[8]  Michael Venturino,et al.  Performance and head movements using a helmet-mounted display with different sized fields-of-view , 1990 .

[9]  I P Howard,et al.  Effect of Stationary Objects on Illusory Forward Self-Motion Induced by a Looming Display , 1988, Perception.

[10]  T. Heckmann,et al.  Circular Vection as a Function of the Relative Sizes, Distances, and Positions of Two Competing Visual Displays , 1989, Perception.

[11]  H.G. Hoffman,et al.  Virtual-reality monitoring , 1995, Proceedings Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium '95.

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