An Investigation of Presence Response across Variations in Visual Realism

This paper describes reports on the results of an experiment designed to study the impact of realism on the reported presence in an immersive virtual environment. An experiment was carried out with 40 participants who were asked to walk through a virtual street, which had virtual characters walking through it. Two factors were varied – texture quality (2 levels) and virtual character realism (2 levels). 10 participants were assigned to each cell, which was also balanced for gender. The results suggest that the lowest presence was achieved with the higher fidelity characters but the less varied textures. Other factors such as perceived realism of character behaviour were important. Finally a system called PIAVCA for virtual character control is introduced which was used in conjunction with DIVE [25, 29]. Keywords--Virtual Environment, Textures, Virtual Characters, Visual Realism, Presence.