First- and Third-Person Perspectives in Immersive Virtual Environments: Presence and Performance Analysis of Embodied Users

Abstract

Current design of virtual reality (VR) applications relies essentially on the transposition of users' viewpoint in first-person perspective (1PP). Within this context, our research aims to compare the impact and the potentialities enabled via the integration of the third-person perspective (3PP) in immersive virtual environments (IVE). Our empirical study is conducted in order to assess the sense of presence, the sense of embodiment, and performance of users confronted with a series of tasks presenting a case of potential use for the video game industry. Our results do not reveal significant differences concerning the sense of spatial presence with either point of view. Nonetheless, they provide evidence confirming the relevance of using the first-person perspective to induce a sense of embodiment toward a virtual body, especially in terms of self-location and ownership. However, no significant differences were observed concerning the sense of agency. Concerning users' performance, our results demonstrate that the first-person perspective enables more accurate interactions, while the third-person perspective provides better space awareness.

Outstanding: A Multi-Perspective Travel Approach for Virtual Reality Games

“…In TM, the players are completely decoupled from their avatar and are able to explore the world independently. Each perspective has benefits and drawbacks [15]: Thirdperson is excellent for environmental perception while firstperson outperforms in interaction-intensive tasks. Through dynamic perspective switching, we combine the strengths of both views and achieve easy traveling and superior overview with local exploration and interaction on demand.…”

“…Using the correct perspective for every situation offers important benefits [15]: first-person is suited best for interactionintensive tasks while third-person provides a better overview. We combine both perspectives to achieve an intuitive navigation approach.…”

How Third-Person Experiences in Immersive Virtual Reality Influence Memory

“…Second, avatar perspective affects spatial awareness in virtual environments (Gorisse, Christmann, Amato, & Richir, 2017;Medeiros et al, 2018;Salamin, Thalmann, & Vexo, 2006).…”

“…Based on evidence suggesting that third-person avatar perspectives change the focus of attention to information in the periphery (Gorisse et al, 2017) and related work suggesting that adopting a 3PP during imagery leads people to think in more concrete ways (Libby & Eibach, 2011), we also manipulated whether cued-recall questions examined central (e.g., identification of a main object in the scene) or peripheral (e.g., weather outside the window in the scene) information. In study one, we manipulated avatar choice to explore its interactive effect on 1PP and 3PP experiences.…”

“…Additionally, we explored the hypothesis that experiencing virtual environments from different viewpoints would also influence the type of information that people retrieved in the following ways: increased use of emotional and perceptual feeling words in narrative descriptions in memories for 1PP than 3PP experiences (Bagri & Jones, 2009), lower accuracy for the spatial layout of the scene in memories for 1PP than 3PP experiences (Gorisse et al, 2017;McIsaac & Eich, 2002), higher accuracy for central than peripheral visual details in memories for 1PP than 3PP experiences (Libby & Eibach, 2011).…”