This study presents the second phase of a series of experiments investigating the impact of avatar visual fidelity on the sense of embodiment and users' behavior in immersive virtual environments. Our main focus concerns the similarity between users and avatars, a factor known as truthfulness. Our experiment requires the participants to control three avatars using a third-person perspective: a robot, a suit and their virtual doppelganger (virtual representation of the self). In order to analyze users' reactions and strategies, each task of the scenario of the virtual reality application can potentially affect the integrity of their characters. Our results revealed that ownership, one of the three factors of the sense of embodiment, is higher for the participants controlling their self-representation than with abstract representations. Furthermore, avatar visual fidelity seems to affect users' subjective experience, half of the panel reported having different behavior depending on the controlled character. Abstract representations allow the users to adopt more risky behaviors, while self-representations maintain a connection with the real world and encourage users to preserve the integrity of their avatar.
It has been demonstrated that virtual reality (VR) exposure can affect the subjective experience of different situations, cognitive capabilities or behavior. It is known that there is a link between a person's physiological state and their psychological self-report and user experience. As an immersive experience can affect users' physiological data, it is possible to adapt and enhance the content of a virtual environment in real-time base on physiological data feedback (biofeedback). With the rapid evolution of the physiological monitoring technologies, it is now possible to exploit different modalities of biofeedback, in a cheap and non-cumbersome manner, and study how they can affect user experience. While most of the studies involving physiological data use it as a measuring tool, we want to study its impact when direct and voluntary physiological control becomes a mean of interaction. To do so, we created a two-parts protocol. The first part was designed to categorize the participants on their heart rate control competency. In the second part of the study, we immersed our participants in a VR experience where they must control their heart rate to interact with the elements in the game. The results were analyzed based on the competency distribution. We observed consistent results between our competency scale and the participants' control of the biofeedback game mechanic. We also found that our direct biofeedback mechanic is highly engaging. We observed that it generated a strong feeling of agency, which is linked with users' level of heart rate control. We highlighted the richness of biofeedback as a direct game mechanic, prompting interesting perspective for personalized immersive experiences.
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