Virtual characters that appear almost photo-realistic have been shown to induce negative responses from viewers in traditional media, such as film and video games. This effect, described as the uncanny valley, is the reason why realism is often avoided when the aim is to create an appealing virtual character. In Virtual Reality, there have been few attempts to investigate this phenomenon and the implications of rendering virtual characters with high levels of realism on user enjoyment. In this paper, we conducted a large-scale experiment on over one thousand members of the public in order to gather information on how virtual characters are perceived in interactive virtual reality games. We were particularly interested in whether different render styles (realistic, cartoon, etc.) would directly influence appeal, or if a character's personality was the most important indicator of appeal. We used a number of perceptual metrics such as subjective ratings, proximity, and attribution bias in order to test our hypothesis. Our main result shows that affinity towards virtual characters is a complex interaction between the character's appearance and personality, and that realism is in fact a positive choice for virtual characters in virtual reality.

In recent years, there has been much research and media attention devoted to investigating virtual reality environments. In this paper, we are investigating if there are differences in how characters are perceived in immersive virtual reality as opposed to more common, screen-based environments. We were particularly interested if the spatial and immersive components play an important part in perception of interactive, game-like settings, where characters can either be controlled (avatars) or observed (agents). We focus on the subjective reports on perceived realism, affinity, co-presence and agency. Since appearance of the character is an important component of affinity, we introduced the changes in render style, ranging in three realism levels, to test if appearance would even further influence the perception in relation to control condition and platform. Furthermore, we adapted a behavioural method (proximity task) as a novel approach to establishing if behavioural changes could be recorded based on the introduced conditions and compared those values with the subjective reports of the participants. The conclusions have an important value to character design specific to platform and character control.

With the development of increasingly sophisticated computer graphics, there is a continuous growth of the variety and originality of virtual characters used in movies and games. So far, however, their design has mostly been led by the artist’s preferences, not by perceptual studies. In this article, we explored how effective non-player character design can be used to influence gameplay. In particular, we focused on abstract virtual characters with few facial features. In experiment 1, we sought to find rules for how to use a character’s facial features to elicit the perception of certain personality traits, using prior findings for human face perception as a basis. In experiment 2, we then tested how perceived personality traits of a non-player character could influence a player’s moral decisions in a video game. We found that the appearance of the character interacting with the subject modulated aggressive behavior towards a non-present individual. Our results provide us with a better understanding of the perception of abstract virtual characters, their employment in video games, as well as giving us some insights about the factors underlying aggressive behavior in video games.

Studies in the field of social psychology have shown evidence that the dimensions of human facial features can directly impact the perception of personality of that human. Traits such as aggressiveness, trustworthiness and dominance have been directly correlated with facial features. If the same correlations were true for virtual faces, this could be a valuable design guideline to direct the creation of characters with intended personalities. In particular, this is relevant for extremely abstract characters that have minimal facial features (often seen in video games and movies), and rely heavily on these features for portraying personality. We conducted an exploratory study in order to retrieve insights about the way certain facial features affect the perceived personality, as well as affinity of very abstract virtual faces. We specifically tested the effect of different head shapes, eye shapes and eye sizes. Interestingly, our findings show that the same rules for real human faces do not apply to the perception of abstract faces, and in some cases are the complete reverse. These results provide us with a better understanding of the perception of abstract virtual faces, and a starting point for the creation of guidelines for how to portray personality using minimal facial cues.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of non-player character (NPC) appearance in games - specifically, how a character's appearance affects a player's performance, and their perception of the game. We ran an experiment where participants played a mobile game on a 9.7" tablet, the goal of which was to kill all of the enemy characters in the game. The visual appearance of the enemy characters varied in the level of aggression in appearance. One crowd had small, green characters with no weapons and minimal armour. The other crowd had red characters that were large and wearing both weapons and armour. Both crowds had the same level of aggression in behaviour, stance and animations, as well as the same intersection-test capsule to ensure the gameplay was balanced and both crowds were equally difficult to kill. As expected, the second crowd was perceived as highly aggressive and less friendly than the first crowd. We found no differences in the enjoyment levels of the game but interestingly, we found that the visual appearance of the crowd had a direct effect on the player performance in combat. In contrast to our hypothesis, players performed worse (i.e., were killed more often) when in combat against the characters with the less-aggressive appearance.

Appearance and animation realism of virtual characters in games, movies or other VR applications has been shown to affect audiences levels of acceptance and engagement with these characters. However, when a virtual character is representing us in VR setup, the level of engagement might also depend on the levels of perceived ownership and sense of control (agency) we feel towards this virtual character. In this study, we used advanced face-tracking technology in order to map real-time tracking data of participants' head and eye movements, as well as facial expressions on virtual faces with different appearance realism characteristics (realistic or cartoon-like) and different levels of animation realism (complete or reduced facial movements). Our results suggest that virtual faces are perceived as more appealing when higher levels of animation realism are provided through real-time tracking. Moreover, high-levels of face-ownership and agency can be induced through synchronous mapping of the face tracking on the virtual face. In this study, we provide valuable insights for future games that use face tracking as an input.

The International Air Transport Association forecasts that there will be at least a 30% increase in passenger demand for flights over the next five years. In these circumstances the aircraft industry is looking for new ways to keep passengers occupied, entertained and healthy, and one of the methods under consideration is immersive virtual reality. It is therefore becoming important to understand how motion sickness and presence in virtual reality are influenced by physical motion. We were specifically interested in the use of head-mounted displays (HMD) while experiencing in-flight motions such as turbulence. 50 people were tested in different virtual environments varying in their context (virtual airplane versus magic carpet ride over tropical islands) and the way the physical motion was incorporated into the virtual world (matching visual and auditory stimuli versus no incorporation). Participants were subjected to three brief periods of turbulent motions realized with a motion simulator. Physiological signals (postural stability, heart rate and skin conductance) as well as subjective experiences (sickness and presence questionnaires) were measured. None of our participants experienced severe motion sickness during the experiment and although there were only small differences between conditions we found indications that it is beneficial for both wellbeing and presence to choose a virtual environment in which turbulent motions could be plausible and perceived as part of the scenario. Therefore we can conclude that brief exposure to turbulent motions does not get participants sick.

We easily adapt to changes in the environment that involve cross-sensory discrepancies (e.g., between vision and proprioception). Adaptation can lead to changes in motor commands so that the experienced sensory consequences are appropriate for the new environment (e.g., we program a movement differently while wearing prisms that shift our visual space). In addition to these motor changes, perceptual judgments of space can also be altered (e.g., how far can I reach with my arm?). However, in previous studies that assessed perceptual judgments of space after visuomotor adaptation, the manipulation was always a planar spatial shift, whereas changes in body perception could not directly be assessed. In this study, we investigated the effects of velocity-dependent (spatiotemporal) and spatial scaling distortions of arm movements on space and body perception, taking advantage of immersive virtual reality. Exploiting the perceptual illusion of embodiment in an entire virtual body, we endowed subjects with new spatiotemporal or spatial 3D mappings between motor commands and their sensory consequences. The results imply that spatiotemporal manipulation of 2 and 4 times faster can significantly change participants’ proprioceptive judgments of a virtual object’s size without affecting the perceived body ownership, although it did affect the agency of the movements. Equivalent spatial manipulations of 11 and 22 degrees of angular offset also had a significant effect on the perceived virtual object’s size; however, the mismatched information did not affect either the sense of body ownership or agency. We conclude that adaptation to spatial and spatiotemporal distortion can similarly change our perception of space, although spatiotemporal distortions can more easily be detected.

Our vision is that regardless of future variations in the interior of airplane cabins, we can utilize ever-advancing state-of-the-art virtual and mixed reality technologies with the latest research in neuroscience and psychology to achieve high levels of comfort for passengers. Current surveys on passenger's experience during air travel reveal that they are least satisfied with the amount and effectiveness of their personal space, and their ability to work, sleep or rest. Moreover, considering current trends it is likely that the amount of available space is likely to decrease and therefore the passenger's physical comfort during a flight is likely to worsen significantly. Therefore, the main challenge is to enable the passengers to maintain a high level of comfort and satisfaction while being placed in a restricted physical space.

ABSTRACT Autonomous virtual characters (AVCs) are becoming more prevalent both for real‐time interaction and also as digital actors in film and TV production. AVCs require believable virtual human animations, accompanied by natural attention generation, and thus the software that controls the AVCs needs to model when and how to interact with the objects and other characters that exist in the virtual environment. This paper models automatic attention behaviour using a saliency model that generates plausible targets for combined gaze and head motions. The model was compared with the default behaviour of the Second Life (SL) system in an object observation scenario while it was compared with real actors' behaviour in a conversation scenario. Results from a study run within the SL system demonstrate a promising attention model that is not just believable and realistic but also adaptable to varying task, without any prior knowledge of the virtual scene. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.