Sound Representing Self-Motion in Virtual Environments Enhances Linear Vection

Abstract

Sound is an important, but often neglected, component for creating a self-motion illusion (vection) in Virtual Reality applications, for example, motion simulators. Apart from auditory motion cues, sound can provide contextual information representing self-motion in a virtual environment. In two experiments we investigated the benefits of hearing an engine sound when presenting auditory (Experiment 1) or auditory-vibrotactile (Experiment 2) virtual environments inducing linear vection. The addition of the engine sound to the auditory scene significantly enhanced subjective ratings of vection intensity in Experiment 1 and vection onset times but not subjective ratings in Experiment 2. Further analysis using individual imagery vividness scores showed that this disparity between vection measures was created by participants with higher kinesthetic imagery. On the other hand, for participants with lower kinesthetic imagery scores, the engine sound enhanced vection sensation in both experiments. A high correlation with participants' kinesthetic imagery vividness scores suggests the influence of a first person perspective in the perception of the engine sound. We hypothesize that self-motion sounds (e.g., the sound of footsteps, engine sound) represent a specific type of acoustic body-centered feedback in virtual environments. Therefore, the results may contribute to a better understanding of the role of self-representation sounds (sonic self-avatars), in virtual and augmented environments.

Vibrotactile inputs to the feet can modulate vection

“…There is, therefore, a strong incentive to leveraging inputs from other sensory modalities in order to enhance the occurrence of vection, such as audition [17,23,22,14]. Force feedback applied to the hands can also be used for this purpose, where the force intensity is adjusted in accordance to the visual flow during navigation in a virtual environment [7,11,4].…”

Visual and Auditory Cue Effects on Risk Assessment in a Highway Training Simulation

“…These sounds were added to the clip in which the observer drives a company pickup truck, such that the pitch is related to the speed of the car. This type of nonspatialized engine sounds is known to increase experienced translational self-motion, probably by enhancing the perceived dynamics of the displayed scene (Väljamäe, Larsson, & Kleiner, 2008).…”

Being Moved by the Self and Others: Influence of Empathy on Self-Motion Perception

“…More recently, virtual reality has been used to increase the feeling of presence in immersive visual-auditory environments and to manipulate self-motion perception (e.g. [14], [15]). Although low-level visual, vestibular and somatosensory contributions to self-motion perception have been studied for over a century, studies have ignored how observing the motion of our conspecifics can influence self-motion perception.…”