Bachelor's Thesis

The effects of scene changes in virtual environments on players’ spatial orientation and fear of collision

Author:

Patrick Steffan

Processing Period:

22.04.2024 - 15.07.2024

Abstract

The use of virtual reality gaming at room-scale is challenged by the shift in player attention to the virtual space. Especially in the case of room-scale VR exergames, extensive body movement comes with a risk of colliding with objects and persons. The apprehension of and perceived risk of such collision can be measured as a variable called Collision Anxiety (CA). In particular, one of its subscales is concerned with the disorienting effect of HMD-based gaming where players receive no visual information from the real world. Disorientation increases the risk of injury, but CA overall also presents an impediment to the feeling of Presence/immersion and thus should be minimized. In this thesis, the effects of scene transitions within a fully immersive room-scale virtual reality game on players’ CA will be studied by contrasting two modes of scene changes in terms of their respective reported CA levels. While the first mode will load the next scene in the same rotation as the current one, the other will rotate the scene to match the player’s current viewing angle. By exploring the effects of such rotation on players’ spatial orientation in the real-world room and general fear of collision, this work may contribute towards a better understanding of CA to further improve players’ experiences as well as their safe-being.