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CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK Exploring Interaction Fidelity in Virtual Reality: Object Manipulation and Whole-Body Movements Katja Rogers Jana Funke Julian Frommel Institute of Media Informatics Institute of Media Infor| matics Institute of Media Informatics Ulm University Ulm University Ulm University Ulm, Germany Ulm, Germany Ulm, Germany [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Sven Stamm Michael Weber Institute of Media Informatics Institute of Media Informatics Ulm University Ulm University Ulm, Germany Ulm, Germany [email protected] [email protected] a) b) c) Figure 1: In two user studies, we explored player experiences with varying degrees of interaction fidelity in VR. One study explored object manipulation (a & b), while the other focused on whole-body movements (c). ABSTRACT and łdanglež along monkey bars. Our findings show that high High degrees of interaction fidelity (IF) in virtual reality IF is preferred for object manipulation, but for whole-body (VR) are said to improve user experience and immersion, movements, moderate IF can suffice, as there is a trade-off but there is also evidence of low IF providing comparable with usability and social factors. We provide guidelines for experiences. VR games are now increasingly prevalent, yet the development of VR games based on our results. we still do not fully understand the trade-off between realism and abstraction in this context. We conducted a lab study CCS CONCEPTS comparing high and low IF for object manipulation tasks in a VR game. In a second study, we investigated players’ · Applied computing → Computer games; · Software experiences of IF for whole-body movements in a VR game and its engineering → Interactive games; that allowed players to crawl underneath virtual boulders KEYWORDS Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for virtual reality; interaction fidelity; games; whole body inter- personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies action; virtual objects; player experience. are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or ACM Reference Format: republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific Katja Rogers, Jana Funke, Julian Frommel, Sven Stamm, and Michael permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. Weber. 2019. Exploring Interaction Fidelity in Virtual Reality: Object CHI 2019, May 4ś9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK Manipulation and Whole-Body Movements. In CHI Conference on © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI 2019), May 4ś to ACM. 9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 14 pages. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5970-2/19/05...$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300644 https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300644 Paper 414 Page 1 CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK 1 INTRODUCTION to object manipulation tasks as well as whole-body move- In recent years, increasing progress in the domain of virtual ments, thereby further extending research on playful bodily reality (VR) has reached the consumer market, to widespread experiences in VR games. popularity. Many games are being ported or developed specif- ically for VR, and there are an increasing number of VR 2 RELATED WORK arcades and installations [39, 47]. While VR applications A prominent aspect of VR development and research has achieve a remarkable degree of display fidelity, they vary focused on fidelity (also naturalism, or realism): the degree widely in the implementation of interactions [18, 24, 35]. of accuracy with which a system recreates real-world expe- Research on precursors to modern VR (e.g., 3D user in- riences. This area of research distinguishes between display terfaces) have long explored how much realism should be fidelity (sensory realism, referring mainly to auditory and featured by VR systems. This realism, i.e., the exactness with visual qualities) and interaction fidelity (action realism, i.e., which VR resembles the real world, is named fidelity; re- the degree of exactness with which user actions in VR resem- search in this domain generally differentiates between dis- ble real world actions in terms of biomechanical similarity, play fidelity (DF) and interaction fidelity (IF). The results of input, and control) [29, 30]. that literature show that increasing DF coincides with an improvement in user experience (UX), particularly presence. Fidelity in VR. In terms of display fidelity, prior research Yet for auditory DF in particular, recent work with modern has shown that high fidelity VR display systems (e.g., graph- VR has shown little impact on users in a game context [38]. ics and audio quality) facilitate immersion and presence [6, In terms of IF, research has yielded evidence that there may 11, 33, 51]. However, there are indications that the addition be an uncanny valley for IF: moderate IF can negatively im- of ambient noises to VR game audio does not improve PX pact UX, but both low and high IF can reach comparably (including immersion) [38]. This suggests that bodily and good results. This has been described as an effect of famil- sensory experiences may override effects of audio fidelity iarity: high degrees of IF remind the user of the real world, in VR; similar effects have been observed for music in the while low degrees of IF are associated with also familiar com- exercise context [23]. puter interfaces. Modern VR, since the widespread adoption For the degree of interaction fidelity, results are further of head-mounted displays (HMDs) and corresponding sys- divided. Researchers have suggested that full realism may tems such as the Vive or Oculus Rift, has reached a good not always be necessary, pointing out that there are benefits level of DF, however IF is implemented in more varied ways. to VR experiences beyond realism [5]. Further, there is work Whether the uncanny valley of IF also applies to modern VR pointing towards an uncanny valley in interaction fidelity: remains has not yet been explored. while moderate degrees of IF negatively impact user expe- In this work, we focus on IF in VR, and explore it from rience in VR, low degrees of IF have reached comparable a player experience (PX) perspective. Games are a particu- user experience to high degrees of IF [29, 30]. McMahan et larly interesting domain for exploring IF, as realism is often al. have speculated that this occurs as an effect of familiarity: not the dominant goal, yielding instead to abstractions for user experiences in high fidelity VR leverage associations ease of use, aesthetics, or game mechanics that facilitate en- with the real world, while low fidelity VR builds on associa- joyment [40, 41]. We empirically explored effects of IF for tions born from familiarity with existing computer interfaces. object manipulation tasks on PX, yielding first evidence that However, research in this area is mostly or partially based high IF improves PX in VR compared to low fidelity imple- on precursors to modern VR (e.g., CAVE systems), extending mentations for this kind of task. Further, contributing to the an opportunity to explore how these findings apply to mod- discourse on benefits of physicality on game engagement ern VR game experiences. Further, studies have focused on and human-computer interaction, we investigated effects a wide range of tasks ranging from object manipulation to of IF for whole-body movements in VR games through a navigation. Research on physicality in games suggest that qualitative mixed-methods study. In a VR prototype, we ap- whole-body movement is a significant factor in engagement proximated several real-world movement metaphors with and sensory immersion [21], suggesting that effects of IF may moderate IF: crawling, dangling, and multi-object interac- differ for more stationary tasks as opposed to tasks focusing tions (e.g., using a virtual item like a sword to cut down a on full-body movements. virtual spiderweb). Our findings point to trade-off considera- In modern VR, there are few studies on effects of interac- tions between high IF for realistic whole-body movements, tion fidelity. One notable example by Nabiyouni et33 al.[ ] and the purposeful use of lower or moderate IF for increased showed evidence for the theory that moderate IF leads to usability and convenience. Based on this, we offer guide- worse user experience than both high and low IF. However, lines to inform design of IF in future VR games with regards this study focused only on locomotion tasks and featured a Paper 414 Page 2 CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK small sample size. The results also showed that some mea- RQ1: Does high IF in object manipulation tasks improve player sures yielded no difference for any degree of fidelity (e.g., no experience in VR? effect on perceived precision in the initial phase oftheVR Our second main RQ targeted whole-body movements in experience). To our knowledge, there is no other empirical VR: RQ2: How does IF in whole-body movements affect player work exploring IF in modern VR. experience in VR? Finally, we explored whether indications that audio fidelity VR Player Experience and Whole-Body Movements. The may be less prominent in visually complex commercial VR growing market of VR applications contains a large num- games [38] also apply to a less visually focused game. We ber of games, prompting a surge in research on PX in VR.

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