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Virtual travel collisions: Response method influences perceived realism of virtual environments

Published: 01 October 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Travel methods are the most basic and widespread interaction method with virtual environments. They are the primary and often the only way the user interactively experiences the environment. We present a study composed of three experiments that investigates how virtual collisions methods and feedback impact user perception of the realism of collisions and the virtual environment. A wand-based virtual travel method was used to navigate maze environments in an immersive projective system. The results indicated that the introduction of collision handling significantly improved the user's perception of the realism of the environment and collisions. An effect of feedback on the perceived level of realism of collisions and solidity of the environment was also found. Our results indicate that feedback should be context appropriate, e.g. fitting to a collision with the object; yet, the modality and richness of feedback were only important in that traditional color change feedback did not perform as well as audio or haptic feedback. In combination, the experiments indicated that in immersive virtual environments the stop collision handling method produced a more realistic impression than the slide method that is popular in games. In total, the study suggests that feedback fitting the collision context, coupled with the stop handling method, provides the best perceived realism of collisions and scene.

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Applied Perception
ACM Transactions on Applied Perception  Volume 10, Issue 4
October 2013
190 pages
ISSN:1544-3558
EISSN:1544-3965
DOI:10.1145/2536764
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 01 October 2013
Accepted: 01 June 2013
Revised: 01 March 2013
Received: 01 September 2012
Published in TAP Volume 10, Issue 4

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Author Tags

  1. Collision Feedback
  2. Presence
  3. Realism
  4. Virtual Collisions
  5. Virtual Environments
  6. Virtual Travel

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  • (2021)Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A SurveyACM Computing Surveys10.1145/346681754:8(1-37)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2021
  • (2021)Do Multisensory Stimuli Benefit the Virtual Reality Experience? A Systematic ReviewIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2020.301008828:2(1428-1442)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2021
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  • (2017)Utilising virtual reality in alcohol studies: A systematic reviewHealth Education Journal10.1177/001789691774353477:2(212-225)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2017

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