The Viewing Angle Dependency in the Presence of Wide Field Still Image Viewing and its Relationship to the Evaluation Indices

Abstract

The presence (i.e. sensation of being there) from a video system is well known to increase as the viewing angle increases. Unfortunately, quantitative evaluation of presence is very difficult. Previous evaluations attempted to determine both subjective and objective assessments. We quantified presence in viewing still images by varying the video system viewing angle along with subjective evaluations using well selected matched words and objective measurements of viewers' body sway. We also examined the correlation between the indices used to quantify presence. The results indicated that the correlation between the evaluation words “presence” and “powerfulness” was comparatively high but that it was almost zero between “presence” and the total distance of viewers' body sway. This suggested that subjective evaluations using the words “presence” and “powerfulness” were both valid to assess presence and that the subjective evaluations of presence did not correlate with the body sway for each experiment trial.