Effects of visualization quality on the sense of presence in a pedestrian simulator

Abstract

When designing a VR user experience, presence seems to be a powerful factor. Being part of a plausible, interactable virtual environment not only inspires joy, but also allows for meaningful and immersive gameplay. The VR gaming industry is already an established multi-billion dollar business, but how can human-in-the-loop research benefit from this technology? Which visual standards must be met to ensure valid user data and does a gradation of the degree of realism affect criteria such as presence, task completion and simulator sickness and thus the validity of the simulation? The paper presents a pedestrian simulator study with thirty participants who were sequentially exposed to three versions of the same environment, where the degree of realism in visualization was varied. The study outlines the relationship between the level of visualization and the above criteria. The final data analysis allows the conclusion that a higher degree of realism leads to higher presence ratings but does not affect the overall performance of the subjects. Nonetheless the overall performance improved over time, independent of the degree of realism. Furthermore, there was no evidence of an effect of realism on simulator sickness. The rated simulator sickness was generally low and did not change over time.