What You See Isn’t Necessarily What You Get —Testing the Influence of Polygon Count on Physical and Self-Presence in Virtual Environments

General

Art der Publikation: Conference Paper

Veröffentlicht auf / in: Mensch und Computer 2020 - Tagungsband

Jahr: 2020

Seiten: 119-128

Verlag (Publisher): ACM

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3404983.3405590

Authors

Torben Volkmann

Daniel Wessel

Tim Ole Caliebe

Nicole Jochems

Abstract

A key characteristic for the effectiveness of Virtual Reality Environments is a high sense of presence -- the feeling of being in that virtual place, even though being physically in another location. For a more differentiated perspective on presence, the term can be defined by subtypes, such as physical, social and self-presence. The Multimodal Presence Scale (MPS) by Makransky and colleagues deals with these dimensions, was translated into German, and evaluated regarding the sensitivity and specificity of the social presence subscale. The results raise the question how well differences in physical and self-presence can be detected by the scale. We conducted an experiment by constructing two virtual worlds, manipulating the polygon count of objects in each world, and measuring presence. Additionally, we assessed the correlation of the MPS with the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ). No significant differences in physical or self-presence were found. However, when examining an item that closely matches the manipulation of the self-presence world (the user's virtual hands), a statistically significant difference was found. We provide three possible explanations for these results: 1) an insufficient impact of the abstraction levels, e.g., due to insufficient time and attention to the manipulation, or too little difference between the abstraction levels, 2) a lack of sensitivity of the used MPS and IPQ, or 3) the polygon count not being important for physical or self-presence. We conclude that high polygon count might not be that crucial for presence and provide suggestions for future research.

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