Comparing the Allocentric Perception of Personalized Virtual Humans between Virtual and Augmented Reality

Closed Human-Computer Interaction Bachelor Thesis Embodiment Lab

The appearance of avatars or generally virtual humans is potentially able to change the perception and behavior of the user and this also beyond the duration of the exposure. Based on this finding, Mixed Reality (MR) has great potential to treat and support the therapy of disturbances such as eating disorders or body weight disorders. At the moment, this field is only partly investigated yet, since previous research has mostly been conceptualized and collected too differently to be able to compare and classify them properly. Therefore, the users’ allocentric perception of virtual humans on different immersive systems was consistently tested and compared. In doing so, a Virtual Reality (VR) Head Mounted Display (HMD), a video-see through AR HMD, and an optical-see through AR HMD in AR mode using the front camera was compared. Furthermore, it was also looked whether the Body Mass Index (BMI) of the users had an impact on their perception of the virtual people. For the 24 participants, immersion was found to have an impact on the sense of presence and virtual human plausibility. Furthermore, a high immersion of the display partially had a positive influence on the weight estimation of the users, so that their estimates of the virtual humans’ weights were more accurate when they wore a higher immersive display. The results of this user study give insights into how immersion as property of the technology of mixed reality displays has an influence on the perception of the user towards a virtual human inside of a virtual environment which is displayed in different types of Extended Reality (XR) such as Virtual Reality (VR), video-see through Augmented Reality (AR) and optical- see through Augmented Reality (AR). This gives a good view on how to continue with studying this field and develop applications for the mentioned purpose. So, the presented study suggests that that higher immersive systems are better suited for therapy of body awareness disturbances, but this possibility has yet to be fully investigated.

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