Week 10 Summary
Physiological Measures of Presence in Stressful Virtual Environments
One of the common methods of measuring the quality of VE is the extent to which users involved in the sense of being present. The study hypothesizes that if the VE seems to be real, it should evoke physiological response similar to those evoked by real environment.
The study investigated three physiological metrics that measure stress in real environments like heart rate, skin conductance, and skin temperature. 10 subjects were selected and trained to pick up books and move at training room. Then, three experiments were conducted; Effects of Multiple Exposures on Presence (Multiple Exposures), Effects of Passive Haptic on Presence (Passive Haptic), and Effects of Frame Rate on Presence (Frame Rate).
They found that presence measures decrease over multiple exposures to the same VE, but not to zero. The heart rate was the best indicator of the presence among the other factors. Moreover, the passive haptic inclusion increased the presence significantly.
The Uncanny Valley: Effect of Realism on the Impression of Artificial Human Faces
The uncanny valley is the hypothesis that when human replicas look and act like a human, but not perfectly, it brings an unpleasant feeling to human being. The extent to which the human replicas are closer to human, the more or less human would be to find the flaws.
The study run four experiments by presenting a web based pictures of different artificial faces. The results of experiments were promising. First, none of the four types of morphing sequences showed that an almost perfectly realistic human appearance was a sufficient condition for the uncanny valley to emerge. Second, the uncanny valley emerged when the eyes and the head showed the largest mismatch in the degree of realism. Third, there is an interaction between the abnormal eye size and realism produced negative peaks.
Variations in Physiological Responses of Participants during Different Stages of an Immersive Virtual Environment Experiment
The study explores the use of physiological monitoring to look at users in more general situations. The study has recorded the physiological response from 40 participants during an immersive environment experience. Then the reaction of the participants was recorded before and after the virtual experience.
The results indicate that there are different mental and physical stress levels in the different time segments of the experiment. The mental stress increases at the beginning and during the virtual experience, then decreases at the beginning of the actual experiment, and it increases again at the end of the experiment. In addition, they found that the more realistic environment can influence the mental stress of participants.
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