Evaluating how psychological senses and physical motions are affected by avatar shapes in a non-immersive environment

Abstract

With the development of virtual reality technology, the use of avatars is attracting increasing attention. Recently, the effects of various avatars in immersive virtual reality environments on users' psychological senses and behavior, such as the sense of body ownership, sense of agency, the Proteus effect, etc., have been reported and actively studied. However, the effects of using various avatars in a non-immersive environment on users' psychological senses and behavior have not yet been fully examined. In this study, we examined how avatar shapes affect the user's psychological senses and physical motions in a non-immersive environment using a penguin avatar and a smoke avatar, with each avatar having a different shape and degrees of freedom and comparing them to a human avatar. Specifically, experiments in which whole-body physical motions were performed were conducted using these three avatars, subjective psychological senses were evaluated through questionnaires, and an objective evaluation was conducted through body-tracking data. The results suggested that the avatar shapes have an effect such that the user's body motion changes unconsciously in a non-immersive environment.