Virtual and Real Body Representation in Mixed Reality: An Analysis of Self-presence and Immersive Environments

摘要

Over the last decade, most of studies were focused on assessments of presence, degrees of immersion and user involvement with virtual reality, few works, however, addressed the mixed reality environments. In virtual reality, mostly through an egocentric point of view, the user is usually represented by a virtual body. In this work, we present an approach where the user can see himself instead of a virtual character. Different than augmented reality approaches, we only detach the user's body and his/her proxies interfaces. We conducted four experiments to measure and evaluate quantitatively and qualitatively the feeling of presence. We measure and compare the degree of presence in different modes and techniques of representation of the user's body through virtually integrated questionnaires. We also analyzed what factors influence to a greater or lesser feeling of presence. For this study, we adapted a real bike with an haptic interface. Results show that there is not necessarily a better or worse type of avatar, but their appearance must match the scenarios and others elements in the virtual environment to greatly increase the participant sense of presence.