Abstract
In this paper we report on an investigation of the effects of a self-avatar's visual similarity to a user's actual appearance, on their perceptions of the avatar in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) experience. We conducted a user study to examine the participant's sense of body ownership, presence and visual realism under three levels of avatar-owner visual similarity: (L1) an avatar reconstructed from real imagery of the participant's appearance, (L2) a cartoon-like virtual avatar created by a 3D artist for each participant, where the avatar shoes and clothing mimic that of the participant, but using a low-fidelity model, and (L3) a cartoon-like virtual avatar with a pre-defined appearance for the shoes and clothing. Surprisingly, the results indicate that the participants generally exhibited the highest sense of body ownership and presence when inhabiting the cartoon-like virtual avatar mimicking the outfit of the participant (L2), despite the relatively low participant similarity. We present our experiment and main findings, also, discuss the potential impact of a self-avatar's visual differences on human perceptions in IVR.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings - VRST 2017 |
Subtitle of host publication | 23rd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
Volume | Part F131944 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781450355483 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2017 Nov 8 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | 23rd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, VRST 2017 - Gothenburg, Sweden Duration: 2017 Nov 8 → 2017 Nov 10 |
Other
Other | 23rd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, VRST 2017 |
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Country | Sweden |
City | Gothenburg |
Period | 17/11/8 → 17/11/10 |
Keywords
- Body ownership
- HMD
- Presence
- Self-avatar
- Virtual reality
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software