Implementation and Evaluation of a Different Way of Displaying Games in Virtual Reality

Sammanfattning: With the recent rise of virtual reality (VR) and head-mounted displays (HMDs), an increasing number of developers have started developing for this relatively new way of displaying content to the user. It is common to experience severe discomfort and symptoms much like Motion Sickness (MS) when using input methods that control the player’s position in the virtual world. Theatre mode (TM) uses a virtual display in a virtual room which helps the user to lessen the symptoms of MS. However, TM lowers the user experience since it is no longer as immersive. The main components of user experience looked upon in this study are flow and immersion. Understanding how this way of displaying content to the user can be enhanced to allow for higher immersion yet keeping its beneficial traits is essential. The objective of this study is to evaluate if additions added to theatre mode (which will be referred to as Enhanced Theatre Mode (ETM)) can enhance the user experience (according to the Game Experience Questionnaire and biometric data) yet keeping its ability to have a low level of discomfort. Confirming this theory would allow developers to use classic game design since the use of input methods such as mouse and keyboard or a gamepad can be utilised. This study only uses consumer grade hardware to give a fair representation of what developers can expect if they were to use this technique for their product. This study was conducted at the Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH). To be able to evaluate the two visualisation modes (TM and ETM) a VR game application prototype was implemented using the Unity game engine. An experiment was conducted which involved participants to play the application first using one of the modes and in another session play the application using the other. User experience and simulation sickness were measured using both qualitative (questionnaires) and quantitative (Galvanic skin response (GSR) and heart rate (HR)) methods. The results from the experiment regarding answers from questionnaires and biometric data (GSR and HR) are presented. Statistical analysis tests were performed on both answers from questionnaires and biometric data to establish if there are any statistical significant differences between the modes. The results of the tests show that there is statistical significance in one subcategory of the game experience questionnaire, though no statistical in the other three subcategories can be found. This difference suggests that ETM lowers the experience in this specific category. Statistical significance also exists in on of the three subcategories of the simulation sickness questionnaire which shows a lower value for the version using ETM. There can also be seen a clear trend across all simulation sickness scores that participants experienced a lower level of simulation sickness using ETM. However, when looking at the results from the simulation sickness questionnaire and game experience questionnaire as a whole, no statical significance can be found. The participants’ answers regarding age, gender, gaming habits, and virtual reality are presented. Also, participants’ opinions relating to the difference between the modes are given. In this study, it is concluded that ETM does not increase the user experience. When it comes to simulation sickness, it is also concluded that there is no increase in the symptoms of simulation sickness compared to TM. There is, however, a trend where the ETM seem to lower the average simulation sickness symptoms.