Ranking Elements of Realism of VR Avatars

In (VR, we can’t see our bodies due to replacing the real world with a virtual one. This leads to disembodiment, which has been shown to impact performance. An avatar, a digital body, can create that embodiment. The proposed research aims to combine the topic of the intern’s master’s thesis, “Investigating Graphical Realism in Mixed Reality and its Correlation with Performance and Presence,” and research conducted by the host institution, “Third-Person Perspective Avatar Embodiment in Augmented Reality: Examining the Proteus Effect on Physical Performance.”

This research will design an experiment that will vary the graphical qualities of an avatar. Participants would be tasked with voting for the avatar they feel has the higher quality, and, similar to the intern’s thesis, the system would apply a ranking to the results. These results would be compared to a participant’s self-reported sense of embodiment for each avatar’s graphical quality. This experiment aims to understand what elements of graphical realism are necessary for embodiment and their impact on embodiment. By combining these research topics, we can better understand the effects of graphical realism on user embodiment in new XR systems. This will inform the intern’s PhD dissertation on graphical elements in XR systems.

Faculty Supervisor:

Robert Teather

Student:

Partner:

Nara Institute of Science and Technology

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Technology; New and Digital Media; Entertainment and Media

University:

Carleton University

Program: