Effects of virtual gait visualization in walk-in-place on body ownership and presence

We investigate the effects of different ways of visualizing the virtual gait of the avatar in the context of Walk-in-Place (WIP) based navigation in a virtual environment (VE). In our study, participants navigated through a VE using the WIP method while inhabiting an avatar. We varied the leg motions of the avatar while performing the WIP gesture: (1) Fixed Body the legs stood still; (2) Prerecorded Animation the legs moved in a fixed predetermined pace (plausible but not in accordance to that of the user in general); (3) Synchronized Motion the legs moved according (synchronized) to the those of the users. Our results indicate that the sense of presence improved significantly by visualizing the leg movement, synchronized or not. This in turn further enhanced the sense of body ownership especially when the leg motion was synchronized to that of the user (Synchronized Motion). However, a significant level of simulation sickness was reported when the virtual leg motion did not match the user's (Fixed Body and Prerecorded Animation). We discuss the implications for representing the avatar locomotion in immersive virtual environments.