Investigating The Sense of Body Ownership over A Bird Avatar for Enhancing Immersion in Flying Experience

Abstract

Since body ownership illusion is expected to enhance an individual ability and positive psychological effect, any existing studies investigated the cause of the body ownership illusion on a human-like avatar. However, few studies have been focused on an avatar whose figure is a non-humanlike, such as a bird. If the illusion on a bird avatar can be controlled, the user's feeling of the presence in virtual reality world and flying experience are expected to be enhanced. Thus, we conducted some experiments to investigate factors to elicit a sense of body ownership over a bird avatar. We evaluated how features of a bird, such as flying action, short body, and sounds of flapping, affected the sense of body ownership. Our findings suggest that a motion synchronization between a participant's body and an avatars' one induce a sense of body ownership. Furthermore, appearance of a bird increases user's immersion in flying experience. Avatar's appearance affects a sense of body ownership over a non-humanlike avatar.