Effects of a Virtual Human Appearance Fidelity Continuum on Visual Attention in Virtual Reality

Abstract

In this contribution we studied how different rendering styles of a virtual human impacted users' visual attention in an interactive medical training simulator. In a mixed design experiment, 78 participants interacted with a virtual human representing a sample from the non-photorealistic (NPR) to the photorealistic (PR) rendering continuity. We presented five rendering style samples scenarios, namely low fidelity all Pencil Shaded (APS), Low to Mid Fidelity Pencil Shader on virtual patient (VP) only (PS), Mid Fidelity All Cartoon Shaded (ACT), Mid to High Fidelity Cartoon Shader on VP only (CT), and relatively High Fidelity Human Like (HL) appearance, and compared how visual attention differed between groups of users. For this study, we employed an eye tracking system for collecting and analyzing users' gaze during interaction with the virtual human in a failure to rescue medical training simulation. Results suggests that users may spend more time in the simulations on the non-realistic fidelity continuum that necessarily do not involve interaction with the virtual human. However, users preferred visually attending to virtual humans in the middle and high fidelity visual appearance conditions when engaging virtual humans in simulated social face-to-face dialogue as compared to the other conditions