Coherency of kinesthetic and visual sensation in virtual reality system

Abstract

To realize highly realistic sensation of presence in a virtual environment, it is necessary to implement a virtual reality system fitting human sensory mechanism, which integrates multiple kinds of sensory information, including kinesthetic and visual sensation. To provide coherency between kinesthetic and visual sensation of presence, the authors have proposed the concept of a virtual human. However, this concept has not been realized mainly because of difficulty in description of a virtual environment. The authors developed an object-oriented method for describing the virtual environment, which is flexible, easy to construct, and efficient for image generation, using the C++ language. The authors configured a system using human motion measurement and visual information display, and implemented the virtual environment description method on the system. Using this system, the authors experimented with the influence caused by the condition whether the coherency between kinesthetic and visual sensation of presence is satisfied.<>