skip to main content
10.1145/3677386.3682098acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagessuiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article
Open access

Investigating Presence Across Rendering Style and Ratio of Virtual to Real Content in Mixed Reality

Published: 07 October 2024 Publication History

Abstract

We investigate how the amount and rendering style of virtual content impact self-reported presence and subjective preference in an extended reality environment. In a within-subjects experiment, we vary the ratio of virtual to real content across three conditions: low (mostly real with some virtual elements), medium (a balanced mix of both), and high (mostly virtual with no real visual elements). For each ratio, we use two different rendering styles for virtual content: realistic and stylized (cartoon-like), evaluating presence through standardized questionnaires. Our results suggest that different ratios of virtual to real content minimally affect presence, with realistic renderings evoking stronger presence than stylized ones. Participants preferred higher amounts of virtual content and realistic virtual content over stylized versions. These findings imply that coherence and quality of virtual content may contribute more to presence in mixed reality settings than amount of virtual content.

References

[1]
Alexandre Abbey, Thibault Porssut, Bruno Herbelin, and Ronan Boulic. 2021. Assessing the Impact of Mixed Reality Immersion on Presence and Embodiment. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion, Interaction and Games (Virtual Event, Switzerland) (MIG ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 2, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3487983.3488304
[2]
Woodrow Barfield and David Zeltzer. 1995. Presence and Performance Within Virtual Environments. In Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195075557.003.0023 arXiv:https://academic.oup.com/book/0/chapter/355239983/chapter-pdf/43767916/isbn-9780195075557-book-part-23.pdf
[3]
Cristina Botella, Javier Fernández-Álvarez, Verónica Guillén, Azucena García-Palacios, and Rosa Baños. 2017. Recent progress in virtual reality exposure therapy for phobias: a systematic review. Current psychiatry reports 19 (2017), 1–13.
[4]
Doug A Bowman and Ryan P McMahan. 2007. Virtual reality: how much immersion is enough?Computer 40, 7 (2007), 36–43.
[5]
H.Q. Dinh, N. Walker, L.F. Hodges, Chang Song, and A. Kobayashi. 1999. Evaluating the importance of multi-sensory input on memory and the sense of presence in virtual environments. In Proceedings IEEE Virtual Reality (Cat. No. 99CB36316). 222–228. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.1999.756955
[6]
J. Fischer, D. Bartz, and W. Straber. 2005. Stylized augmented reality for improved immersion. In IEEE Proceedings. VR 2005. Virtual Reality, 2005.195–202. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2005.1492774
[7]
Maribeth Gandy, Richard Catrambone, Blair MacIntyre, Chris Alvarez, Elsa Eiriksdottir, Matthew Hilimire, Brian Davidson, and Anne Collins McLaughlin. 2010. Experiences with an AR evaluation test bed: Presence, performance, and physiological measurement. In 2010 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality. 127–136. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR.2010.5643560
[8]
Simone Grassini, Karin Laumann, and Martin Rasmussen Skogstad. 2020. The use of virtual reality alone does not promote training performance (but sense of presence does). Frontiers in psychology 11 (2020), 553693.
[9]
Jonatan Hvass, Oliver Larsen, Kasper Vendelbo, Niels Nilsson, Rolf Nordahl, and Stefania Serafin. 2017. Visual realism and presence in a virtual reality game. In 2017 3DTV Conference: The True Vision - Capture, Transmission and Display of 3D Video (3DTV-CON). 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1109/3DTV.2017.8280421
[10]
Wijnand A IJsselsteijn, Huib De Ridder, Jonathan Freeman, and Steve E Avons. 2000. Presence: concept, determinants, and measurement. In Human vision and electronic imaging V, Vol. 3959. SPIE, 520–529.
[11]
Crescent Jicol, Christopher Clarke, Emilia Tor, Rebecca M Dakin, Tom Charlie Lancaster, Sze Tung Chang, Karin Petrini, Eamonn O’Neill, Michael J Proulx, and Christof Lutteroth. 2023. Realism and Field of View Affect Presence in VR but Not the Way You Think. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (, Hamburg, Germany,) (CHI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 399, 17 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581448
[12]
M Carmen Juan and David Pérez. 2010. Using augmented and virtual reality for the development of acrophobic scenarios. Comparison of the levels of presence and anxiety. Computers & Graphics 34, 6 (2010), 756–766.
[13]
Sungchul Jung and Robert. W Lindeman. 2021. Perspective: Does Realism Improve Presence in VR? Suggesting a Model and Metric for VR Experience Evaluation. Frontiers in Virtual Reality 2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2021.693327
[14]
Sungchul Jung, Pamela J. Wisniewski, and Charles E. Hughes. 2018. In Limbo: The Effect of Gradual Visual Transition Between Real and Virtual on Virtual Body Ownership Illusion and Presence. In 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR). 267–272. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2018.8447562
[15]
Pankaj Khanna, Insu Yu, Jesper Mortensen, and Mel Slater. 2006. Presence in response to dynamic visual realism: a preliminary report of an experiment study. In Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology(VRST ’06). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 364–367. https://doi.org/10.1145/1180495.1180569
[16]
Owlchemy Labs. 2016. Job Simulator: the 2050 archives. https://jobsimulatorgame.com/
[17]
Marc Erich Latoschik, Daniel Roth, Dominik Gall, Jascha Achenbach, Thomas Waltemate, and Mario Botsch. 2017. The effect of avatar realism in immersive social virtual realities. In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden) (VRST ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 39, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3139131.3139156
[18]
Matthew Lombard and Theresa Ditton. 1997. At the Heart of It All: The Concept of Presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3, 2 (09 1997), JCMC321. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x
[19]
Anabela Marto and Alexandrino Gonçalves. 2024. A scope of presence-related feelings in AR studies. Virtual Real. 28, 1 (jan 2024), 14 pages. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-023-00908-7
[20]
Rachel McDonnell, Martin Breidt, and Heinrich H. Bülthoff. 2012. Render me real? investigating the effect of render style on the perception of animated virtual humans. ACM Trans. Graph. 31, 4, Article 91 (jul 2012), 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2185520.2185587
[21]
M. Meehan, S. Razzaque, B. Insko, M. Whitton, and F.P. Brooks. 2005. Review of four studies on the use of physiological reaction as a measure of presence in stressful virtual environments. Applied Psychophysiology Biofeedback 30, 3 (2005), 239–258,. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10484-005-6381-3
[22]
M. Meehan, S. Razzaque, M.C. Whitton, and F.P. Brooks. 2003. Effect of latency on presence in stressful virtual environments. In IEEE Virtual Reality, 2003. Proceedings.141–148. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2003.1191132 ISSN: 1087-8270.
[23]
Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino. 1994. A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays. https://search.ieice.org/bin/summary.php?id=e77-d_12_1321
[24]
Marvin Minsky. 1980. Telepresence. (1980).
[25]
Masahiro Mori, Karl F MacDorman, and Norri Kageki. 2012. The uncanny valley [from the field]. IEEE Robotics & automation magazine 19, 2 (2012), 98–100.
[26]
Holger Regenbrecht, Katrin Meng, Arne Reepen, Stephan Beck, and Tobias Langlotz. 2017. Mixed Voxel Reality: Presence and Embodiment in Low Fidelity, Visually Coherent, Mixed Reality Environments. In 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). 90–99. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR.2017.26
[27]
Maria V. Sanchez-Vives and Mel Slater. 2005. From presence to consciousness through virtual reality. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 6, 4 (April 2005), 332–339. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1651 Number: 4 Publisher: Nature Publishing Group.
[28]
Valentin Schwind, Pascal Knierim, Nico Haas, and Niels Henze. 2019. Using Presence Questionnaires in Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300590
[29]
Richard Skarbez, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., and Mary C. Whitton. 2017. A Survey of Presence and Related Concepts. Comput. Surveys 50, 6 (Nov. 2017), 96:1–96:39. https://doi.org/10.1145/3134301
[30]
Richard Skarbez, Missie Smith, and Mary C. Whitton. 2021. Revisiting Milgram and Kishino’s Reality-Virtuality Continuum. Frontiers in Virtual Reality 2 (2021). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frvir.2021.647997
[31]
Mel Slater. 2004. How colorful was your day? Why questionnaires cannot assess presence in virtual environments. Presence 13, 4 (2004), 484–493.
[32]
Mel Slater. 2009. Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364, 1535 (2009), 3549–3557.
[33]
Mel Slater, Pankaj Khanna, Jesper Mortensen, and Insu Yu. 2009. Visual Realism Enhances Realistic Response in an Immersive Virtual Environment. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 29, 3 (2009), 76–84. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2009.55
[34]
Mel Slater, Vasilis Linakis, Martin Usoh, and Rob Kooper. 1996. Immersion, presence and performance in virtual environments: an experiment with tri-dimensional chess. In Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (Hong Kong) (VRST ’96). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 163–172. https://doi.org/10.1145/3304181.3304216
[35]
Mel Slater, Martin Usoh, and Anthony Steed. 1995. Taking steps: the influence of a walking technique on presence in virtual reality. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 2, 3 (sep 1995), 201–219. https://doi.org/10.1145/210079.210084
[36]
William Steptoe, Simon Julier, and Anthony Steed. 2014. Presence and discernability in conventional and non-photorealistic immersive augmented reality. In 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). IEEE, Munich, Germany, 213–218. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR.2014.6948430
[37]
Thomas Strothotte and Stefan Schlechtweg. 2002. Non-photorealistic computer graphics: modeling, rendering, and animation. Morgan Kaufmann.
[38]
Xan Townsend. 2021. Realism vs stylised graphics in VR. https://www.misfitmed.com/xander-townsend/realism-vs-stylised-graphics-in-vr
[39]
Martin Usoh, Ernest Catena, Sima Arman, and Mel Slater. 2000. Using Presence Questionnaires in Reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 9, 5 (Oct. 2000), 497–503. https://doi.org/10.1162/105474600566989
[40]
Valve. 2020. Half-Life: Alyx. https://www.halflife.com/en/alyx/
[41]
Joy Van Baren. 2004. Measuring presence: A guide to current measurement approaches. Deliverable of the OmniPres project IST-2001-39237 (2004).
[42]
Eleven VR. 2016. Table Tennis. https://elevenvr.com/en/
[43]
Bob G. Witmer and Michael J. Singer. 1998. Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 7, 3 (June 1998), 225–240. https://doi.org/10.1162/105474698565686
[44]
Jacob O Wobbrock, Leah Findlater, Darren Gergle, and James J Higgins. 2011. The aligned rank transform for nonparametric factorial analyses using only anova procedures. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 143–146.
[45]
Insu Yu, Jesper Mortensen, Pankaj Khanna, Bernhard Spanlang, and Mel Slater. 2012. Visual Realism Enhances Realistic Response in an Immersive Virtual Environment - Part 2. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 32, 6 (2012), 36–45. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2012.121
[46]
P. Zimmons and A. Panter. 2003. The influence of rendering quality on presence and task performance in a virtual environment. In IEEE Virtual Reality, 2003. Proceedings.293–294. https://doi.org/10.1109/VR.2003.1191170

Index Terms

  1. Investigating Presence Across Rendering Style and Ratio of Virtual to Real Content in Mixed Reality

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Information & Contributors

        Information

        Published In

        cover image ACM Conferences
        SUI '24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction
        October 2024
        396 pages
        ISBN:9798400710889
        DOI:10.1145/3677386
        This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

        Sponsors

        Publisher

        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 07 October 2024

        Check for updates

        Author Tags

        1. Immersion
        2. Mixed Reality
        3. Presence

        Qualifiers

        • Research-article
        • Research
        • Refereed limited

        Funding Sources

        Conference

        SUI '24

        Acceptance Rates

        Overall Acceptance Rate 86 of 279 submissions, 31%

        Contributors

        Other Metrics

        Bibliometrics & Citations

        Bibliometrics

        Article Metrics

        • 0
          Total Citations
        • 178
          Total Downloads
        • Downloads (Last 12 months)178
        • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)78
        Reflects downloads up to 24 Jan 2025

        Other Metrics

        Citations

        View Options

        View options

        PDF

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader

        HTML Format

        View this article in HTML Format.

        HTML Format

        Login options

        Figures

        Tables

        Media

        Share

        Share

        Share this Publication link

        Share on social media