[Paper] Influence of Local Lag on Human Perception of Softness in Networked Virtual Environment with Haptic Sense

game subjectively and objectively. They handle a networked balloon bursting game in which two players burst balloons (i.e., soft objects) in a 3D virtual space by using haptic interface devices, and the players compete for the number of burst balloons. As a result, they find that the operability of haptic interface device depends on the local lag, which is set to the network delay. They also confirm that there exists a trade-off relationship between the operability and fairness. However, they do not examine the influence of local lag on the human perception of object features. In [18], the authors examine the influence of network delay on human perception of weight in a networked virtual environment by experiment. Each of two users Abstract This paper investigates the influence of local lag on human perception of softness in a networked virtual environment with haptic sense by Quality of Experience (QoE) assessment. The local lag control can keep the consistency in the game state among multiple terminals by setting the local lag to the network delay. In the assessment, we employ only one terminal in a networked haptic balloon bursting game where there are two balloons in a virtual space; one balloon has a standard value of softness (expressed in force here) and the local lag is set to 0 ms, and the other has a different value of softness and the local lag is set to a certain value. Each subject bursts the two balloons by using a haptic interface device and answers which balloon is harder or not. As a result, we clarify how largely the local lag makes the softness harder.