Evaluating VR Systems and Experiences
Steven M. LaValle · Virtual Reality · 2023
Opportunities for failure exist at all levels, from hardware, to low-level software, to content creation engines. As hardware and low-level software rapidly improve, the burden is shifting more to developers of software engines and VR experiences. This chapter presents several topics that may aid engineers and developers in their quest to build better VR systems and experiences. Section 12.1 introduces methods for guiding them to improve their discriminatory power. Rather than adapting to become oblivious to a problem, a developer could train herself to become more sensitive to problems. Section 12.2 applies the fundamentals from this book to provide simple advice for VR developers. Section 12.3 covers VR sickness, including the main symptoms and causes, so that VR systems and experiences may be improved. Section 12.4 introduces general methods for designing experiments that involve human subjects, and includes some specific methods from psychophysics. All of the concepts from this chapter should be used to gain critical feedback and avoid pitfalls in an iterative VR development process.