Influence of exocentric avatars on the sensation of presence in room-mounted vir-tual environments
Jakob T. Valvoda, Torsten Kuhlen, Christian H Bischof · TUbilio (Technical University of Darmstadt) · 2007
The influence of avatars on the sensation of presence in room-mounted virtual environments is handled in this work. In room-mounted set-ups, users are located in the center of interaction and are surrounded by virtual stimuli while perceiving their real body. Several scenarios, like collision and occlusion during navigation and manipulation, demand for avatars that represent the user within the virtual world. Room-mounted set-ups allow for exocentric avatars only and therefore induce a mismatch during the process of identification of the body schema with the body representation. The study presented here clarifies the influence of exocentric avatars on the sensation of presence and evaluates different methods for simulation of kinematics. To do so, subjects were required to perform a sports task in a room-mounted virtual environment. The avatar and the simulation of kinematics were modulated. The results showed that subjective presence estimates are decreased during the display of an exocentric avatar. In conditions using an avatar, subjects clearly preferred avatars with synchronous kinematics over animated or rigid virtual humanoids. The paper discusses implications on the application of avatars in room-mounted virtual environments.