Abstract
The visual representation of human-like entities in virtual worlds is becoming a very important aspect as virtual reality becomes more and more “social”. The visual representation of a character’s resemblance to a real person and the emotional response to it, as well as the expectations raised, have been a topic of discussion for several decades and have been debated by scientists from different disciplines. But as with any new technology, the findings may need to be reevaluated and adapted to new modalities. In this context, we make two contributions which may have implications for how avatars should be represented in social virtual reality applications. First, we determine how default and customized characters of current social virtual reality platforms appear in terms of human likeness, eeriness, and likability, and whether there is a clear resemblance to a given person. It can be concluded that the investigated platforms vary strongly in their representation of avatars. Common to all is that a clear resemblance does not exist. Second, we show that the uncanny valley effect is also present in head-mounted displays, but—compared to 2D monitors—even more pronounced.
Highlights
At the time of Facebook Inc. acquisition of OculusTM in March 2014, many thought it would revolutionize the way people interact with each other in social media, gaming, and education
Villani et al found a link between presence and emotions in virtual reality (VR). They figured out that the measured level of presence was significantly higher in anxious virtual environments than in relaxing ones and triggered a stronger emotional response [29]. As all these detailed facets play a vital role in the complex field of nonverbal communication (NVC), it is worthwhile to investigate how current social virtual reality (SVR) platforms address the challenge of implementing selfrepresentation and self-expression using avatars
H3.1 There is no difference in perceived human likeness of characters in regards to the different output devices HMD and monitor
Summary
At the time of Facebook Inc. acquisition of OculusTM in March 2014, many thought it would revolutionize the way people interact with each other in social media, gaming, and education. While video conferencing may still be the first choice for most people to overcome physical distance, alternative technologies such as VR offer opportunities to replace “reallife” encounters more comprehensively and intuitively by allowing people to interact with each other in a shared 3dimensional space This shared space has a high potential to lead to higher (perceived) immersion, presence, and connection to others than comparable content being perceived using a regular screen. Use multi-camera rigs that only a small number of potential VR users have access to Other approaches such as using artificial intelligence to recreate a 3D model of a person from 2D images or videos are promising but have not yet been rolled out to the general public because most of the time, it still requires post-processing via 3D modeling tools for rigging and texturing [1] or are not close in resemblance. To be still recognizable by others, participants put pictures of their face on the virtual avatar’s chest. see for instance Fig. 1
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