TY - GEN
T1 - The impact of avatar-owner visual similarity on body ownership in immersive virtual reality
AU - Jo, Dongsik
AU - Kim, Kangsoo
AU - Welch, Gregory F.
AU - Jeon, Woojin
AU - Kim, Yongwan
AU - Kim, Ki Hong
AU - Kim, Gerard Jounghyun
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
Copyright:
Copyright 2018 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/11/8
Y1 - 2017/11/8
N2 - In this paper we report on an investigation of the effects of a self-avatar's visual similarity to a user's actual appearance, on their perceptions of the avatar in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) experience. We conducted a user study to examine the participant's sense of body ownership, presence and visual realism under three levels of avatar-owner visual similarity: (L1) an avatar reconstructed from real imagery of the participant's appearance, (L2) a cartoon-like virtual avatar created by a 3D artist for each participant, where the avatar shoes and clothing mimic that of the participant, but using a low-fidelity model, and (L3) a cartoon-like virtual avatar with a pre-defined appearance for the shoes and clothing. Surprisingly, the results indicate that the participants generally exhibited the highest sense of body ownership and presence when inhabiting the cartoon-like virtual avatar mimicking the outfit of the participant (L2), despite the relatively low participant similarity. We present our experiment and main findings, also, discuss the potential impact of a self-avatar's visual differences on human perceptions in IVR.
AB - In this paper we report on an investigation of the effects of a self-avatar's visual similarity to a user's actual appearance, on their perceptions of the avatar in an immersive virtual reality (IVR) experience. We conducted a user study to examine the participant's sense of body ownership, presence and visual realism under three levels of avatar-owner visual similarity: (L1) an avatar reconstructed from real imagery of the participant's appearance, (L2) a cartoon-like virtual avatar created by a 3D artist for each participant, where the avatar shoes and clothing mimic that of the participant, but using a low-fidelity model, and (L3) a cartoon-like virtual avatar with a pre-defined appearance for the shoes and clothing. Surprisingly, the results indicate that the participants generally exhibited the highest sense of body ownership and presence when inhabiting the cartoon-like virtual avatar mimicking the outfit of the participant (L2), despite the relatively low participant similarity. We present our experiment and main findings, also, discuss the potential impact of a self-avatar's visual differences on human perceptions in IVR.
KW - Body ownership
KW - HMD
KW - Presence
KW - Self-avatar
KW - Virtual reality
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U2 - 10.1145/3139131.3141214
DO - 10.1145/3139131.3141214
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85038580629
T3 - Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, VRST
BT - Proceedings - VRST 2017
A2 - Spencer, Stephen N.
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 23rd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, VRST 2017
Y2 - 8 November 2017 through 10 November 2017
ER -