The Effect of Realistic Appearance of Virtual Characters in Immersive Environments - Does the Character's Personality Play a Role?

Zibrek, Katja; Kokkinara, Elena; McDonnell, Rachel

doi:10.1109/tvcg.2018.2794638

Cited by 106 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(53 reference statements)

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“…Despite widespread use in other contexts, only a very small number of VR studies have used the PANAS scale (e.g. Zibrek et al 2018) to investigate user affect; no previous works have used PANAS to study VR crowd simulations, and none have so far investigated user response to varying crowd density in VR.…”

Section: Objectives and Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual reality crowd simulation: effects of agent density on user experience and behaviour

et al. 2018

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Agent-based crowd simulations are used for modelling building and space usage, allowing designers to explore hypothetical real-world scenarios, including extraordinary events such as evacuations. Existing work which engages virtual reality (VR) as a platform for crowd simulations has been primarily focussed on the validation of simulation models through observation; the use of interactions such as gaze to enhance a sense of immersion; or studies of proxemics. In this work, we extend previous studies of proxemics and examine the effects of varying crowd density on user experience and behaviour. We have created a simulation in which participants walk freely and perform a routine manual task, whilst interacting with agents controlled by a typical social force simulation model. We examine and report the effects of crowd density on both affective state and behaviour. Our results show a significant increase in negative affect with density, measured using a self-report scale. We further show significant differences in some aspects of user behaviours, using video analysis, and discuss how our results relate to VR simulation design for mixed human-agent scenarios.

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Section: Objectives and Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual reality crowd simulation: effects of agent density on user experience and behaviour

et al. 2018

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“…The same computer-animated model that was rated eerier than its human counterpart in Patel & MacDorman (2015) was not significantly different in the present study. This may indicate how cues about character traits can dilute an index intended to measure eeriness (Zibrek, Kokkinara & McDonnell, 2018). To control for the compounding effects of the doctor's bedside manner and outcome on eeriness, the experiment could administer eeriness scales in a pretest: participants would rate the doctor portrayed by either a real human actor or his digital double in a neutral settingwithout any cues on warmth, coldness, competence, or incompetence, and before the narrative is introduced.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The doctor’s digital double: how warmth, competence, and animation promote adherence intention

Dai¹,

MacDorman²

2018

PeerJ Computer Science

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Background Each year, patient nonadherence to treatment advice costs the US healthcare system more than $300 billion and results in 250,000 deaths. Developing virtual consultations to promote adherence could improve public health while cutting healthcare costs and usage. However, inconsistencies in the realism of computer-animated humans may cause them to appear eerie, a phenomenon termed the uncanny valley. Eeriness could reduce a virtual doctor’s credibility and patients’ adherence. Methods In a 2 × 2 × 2 between-groups posttest-only experiment, 738 participants played the role of a patient in a hypothetical virtual consultation with a doctor. The consultation varied in the doctor’s Character (good or poor bedside manner), Outcome (received a fellowship or sued for malpractice), and Depiction (a recorded video of a real human actor or of his 3D computer-animated double). Character, Outcome, and Depiction were designed to manipulate the doctor’s level of warmth, competence, and realism, respectively. Results Warmth and competence increased adherence intention and consultation enjoyment, but realism did not. On the contrary, the computer-animated doctor increased adherence intention and consultation enjoyment significantly more than the doctor portrayed by a human actor. We propose that enjoyment of the animated consultation caused the doctor to appear warmer and more real, compensating for his realism inconsistency. Expressed as a path model, this explanation fit the data. Discussion The acceptance and effectiveness of the animation should encourage the development of virtual consultations, which have advantages over creating content with human actors including ease of scenario revision, internationalization, localization, personalization, and web distribution.

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“…Additionally, developing experimental scenarios in which participants have to perform more complex locomotion tasks, e.g., side stepping or passing through narrow hallways, might be necessary to further understand the impact that the motion artifacts have on the sense of self-agency. Finally, in our future work, we would like to explore whether the sense of self-agency is affected when providing tactile feedback [52,53] to participant's body as well as how participants perceive self-agency when embodied to a virtual character with variations on his/her appearance [54,55].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Motion Artifacts on Self-Avatar Agency

2019

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One way of achieving self-agency in virtual environments is by using a motion capture system and retargeting user’s motion to the virtual avatar. In this study, we investigated whether the self-agency is affected when motion artifacts appear on top of the baseline motion capture data assigned to the self-avatar. For this experiment, we implemented four artifacts: noise, latency, motion jump, and offset rotation of joints. The data provided directly from the motion capture system formed the baseline of the study. We developed three observation tasks to assess self-agency: self-observation, observation through a virtual mirror, and observation during locomotion. A questionnaire was adopted and used to capture the self-agency of participants. We analyzed the collected responses of participants to determine whether the motion artifacts significantly altered the participants’ sense of self-agency. The obtained results indicated that participants are not always sensitive to the motion artifacts assigned to the self-avatar, but the sense of self-agency is dependent on the observation task they were asked to perform. Implications for further research are discussed.

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The Effect of Realistic Appearance of Virtual Characters in Immersive Environments - Does the Character's Personality Play a Role?

Cited by 106 publications

References 44 publications

Virtual reality crowd simulation: effects of agent density on user experience and behaviour

Virtual reality crowd simulation: effects of agent density on user experience and behaviour

The doctor’s digital double: how warmth, competence, and animation promote adherence intention

The Effects of Motion Artifacts on Self-Avatar Agency

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