Fidelity of 'Feel': Emotional Affordance in Virtual Environments

摘要

Virtual environments (VEs) should be able to provide experiences as rich and complex as those to be had in real life. While this seems obvious, it is not yet possible to create a perfect simulacrum of the real world, so such correspondence requires the development of design techniques by which VEs can be made to appear more real. It also requires evaluation studies to determine if such techniques produce the desired results. As emotions are implicated in our phenomenological understanding of the physical world, they should also play an integral role in the experience of the virtual one. Therefore, a logical sequence of experimentation to understand how VEs can be made to function as emotion-induction systems is in order. The Sensory Environments Evaluation (SEE) research program has developed a twofold design process to explore if we react to virtually supplied stimuli as we do to the real world equivalents. We look at manipulating both the sensory and emotional aspects of not only the environment but also the participant. We do this with the focus on what emotional affordances this manipulation will provide. Our first evaluation scenario, DarkCon, was designed in this way to produce a strong sense of presence. Sixty-four subjects have been fielded to date and the data is currently being analyzed for results. We hope to find that rich design techniques along with the frame of mind with which a VR experience is approached will predictably influence perception and behavior within a virtual world. We will use these results to inform continuing research into the creation of more emotionally affective VEs.