Hand-held virtual reality: A feasibility study

Hand-held computing devices are ubiquitous and have become part of our lives these days. Moreover, hand-held devices are also increasingly being equipped with special sensors and non-traditional displays. As such, it raises the question of whether such a "small" and "reduced" device could serve as an effective virtual reality (VR) platform and provide sufficient immersion and presence, e.g. through multimodal interaction. In this paper, we address this question by comparing the perceived field of view (FOV) and level of immersion and presence among the users' of VR platforms, varied in the sizes of physical/software FOV and in styles of interaction. In particular, we consider a motion based interaction, a style of interaction uniquely suitable for the "hand-held" devices. Our experimental study has revealed that when a motion based interaction was used, the FOV perceived by the user for the small hand held device was significantly greater than (around 50%) the actual. Other displays using the button or mouse/keyboard interface did not exhibit such a phenomenon. In addition, the level of user felt presence was higher than even that from a large projection based VR platform. The paper demonstrates the distinct possibility of realizing reasonable virtual reality even with devices with a small visual field of view and limited processing power.