Technologies for Social Augmentations in User-Embodied Virtual Reality

Roth, Daniel; Bente, Gary; Kullmann, Peter; Mal, David; Purps, Chris Felix; Vogeley, Kai; Latoschik, Marc Erich

doi:10.1145/3359996.3364269

Cited by 54 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…With regard to the impacts of user embodiment, it was argued that a self-representation that is of of similar appearance and shows accurate response to the user's movement (e.g., of body, face, and eye motion) foster the perception of presence [75,85]. Different levels of behavioral realism and accurate motion reconstruction, for example by the fidelity of tracking [67,70], as well as natural or artificially introduced behaviors [22,69] may therefore also influence the perception of embodiment as such.…”

Section: Virtual Embodimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Construction of the Virtual Embodiment Questionnaire (VEQ)

Roth

Latoschik

2020

IEEE Trans. Visual. Comput. Graphics

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151

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Fig. 1. Factors addressed by the VEQ. Virtual body ownership (a) which refers to the perception of perceiving a virtual body as the own, as the source of all sensations; Agency (b), which refers to the perception of control over a virtual body, and through that, control over events in the environment; Change (c) which refers to the change in the perceived body schema due to the stimulation. The user is depicted in grey; the virtual avatar is depicted in orange. Abstract-User embodiment is important for many virtual reality (VR) applications, for example, in the context of social interaction, therapy, training, or entertainment. However, there is no data-driven and validated instrument to empirically measure the perceptual aspects of embodiment, necessary to reliably evaluate this important phenomenon. To provide a method to assess components of virtual embodiment in a reliable and consistent fashion, we constructed a Virtual Embodiment Questionnaire (VEQ). We reviewed previous literature to identify applicable constructs and questionnaire items, and performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the data from three experiments (N = 196). The analysis confirmed three factors: (1) ownership of a virtual body, (2) agency over a virtual body, and (3) the perceived change in the body schema. A fourth study (N = 22) was conducted to confirm the reliability and validity of the scale, by investigating the impacts of latency and latency jitter present in the simulation. We present the proposed scale and study results and discuss resulting implications.

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Section: Virtual Embodimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Construction of the Virtual Embodiment Questionnaire (VEQ)

Roth

Latoschik

2020

IEEE Trans. Visual. Comput. Graphics

Self Cite

151

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“…Participants could only use limited hand gesture driven by the controllers for communication. Roth et al (Roth et al, 2019) proposed a software architecture using four data layers to augment social interactions by integrating behavior tracking such as body, eye gaze, and facial expressions into the SVE. Their system was able to support social communication, but participants missed hand-gesture cues.…”

Section: Collaboration In Shared Virtual Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using a Fully Expressive Avatar to Collaborate in Virtual Reality: Evaluation of Task Performance, Presence, and Attraction

Wang

Jung

et al. 2021

Front. Virtual Real.

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Avatar-mediated collaboration in virtual environments is becoming more and more prevalent. However, current consumer systems are not suited to fully replicate real-world nonverbal communication. We present a novel avatar system for collaboration in virtual reality, which supports high levels of nonverbal expression by tracking behavior such as body movement, hand gesture, and facial expression. The system was built using camera tracking technology only. Therefore, in contrast to many other high-level tracking systems, it does not require users to wear additional trackers on their bodies. We compared our highly expressive system with a consumer setup extended with two body-worn trackers in a dyadic study. We investigated users’ performance, such as completion time and accuracy, as well as the presence and interpersonal attraction in a virtual charades game using an asymmetric control scheme. The results show that participants interacting with highly expressive avatars felt more social presence and attraction and exhibited better task performance than those interacting with partners represented using low-expressive avatars. Hence, we conclude that virtual reality avatar systems benefit from a higher level of nonverbal expressiveness, which can be achieved without additional body-worn trackers.

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“…In that sense, we currently focus on fostering desired and inhibit undesired experiences of virtual body contact based on variations of immersive characteristics of the interaction. Inspired by the idea to augment the social interaction in VR [45], we currently prepare a study on visual augmentations of virtual touches (e.g., particle effects on body contact) to manipulate emotional reactions.…”

Section: Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%