The effect of motion on presence during virtual sailing for advanced training
Fabian A. Mulder, Jouke Verlinden, Radoslaw R. Dukalski · Research Repository (Delft University of Technology) · 2012
This paper explores the amount of motion simulation required to influence presence and immersion on a dinghy sailing simulator. We specifically focused on the effects of roll, pitch and heave, when sailing an course with up-, side-and down-wind sections in a virtual environment. A real dingy was mounted on a 6 Degrees of Freedom (DOF) Stewart platform; the participants could influence the course of a virtual boat by a rudder while experiencing physical displacement by simulated wind and waves. Five experienced sailors completed the same course several times while subjected to varying motion conditions. Results show a positive effect on presence and immersion when adding simulated motion in multiple degrees of freedom to the dinghy sailing simulator, especially by roll (>20 degrees necessary), while pitch is of less importance (<5 degrees necessary) and heave (less than 10 cm) can almost be neglected. These findings are of importance for developing boat simulators and other virtual sports applications that employ actuated platforms