身体がない仮想現実環境において歩行と視点移動の同期が臨場感を伴う

抄録

In a virtual reality (VR) environment, users often control virtual bodies. While having a body is likely to promote a feeling of presence, does an invisible body make users lose the feeling? Using a head mounted display and 360-degree camera shooting pseudo image, we constructed a situation where participants can walk “with an invisible body.” The camera was moved in accordance with the participant’s walking and was hung at the height of the participant’s line of sight, so the participants felt walking in the virtual space freely. We tested a feeling of presence in the proprietary developed VR with/without obstacle in the image and found that the feeling of presence was maintained even in the situation when they virtually “transmitted” the obstacle. Our findings suggest that consistent somatosensory-vestibular-visual stimuli during walking are accompanied with the feeling of presence even when a body was not presented.