Effects of Field-of-View Expansion Using a Wide-Field HMD on Sensibility During Straight-Line Video Viewing

Abstract

Visual information is considered particularly important among the information that humans receive from the external world, because of its significant impact on human mental activity, including self-position and self-motion perception, impressions, moods, situational judgment, and decision-making. Therefore, we conducted a study to investigate the effects of expanding the field of view (FOV) that receives visual information on human mental activity. In the study, we created three types of visual environments in a virtual space and used image processing to expand the FOV of videos that move straight through each environment. We then conducted an experiment to explore how expanding the FOV affected viewers' impressions of the visual environment and their mood. The results showed that expanding the FOV increased the sense of dynamism and spaciousness of the visual environment, and led to improvements in viewers' activation and arousal levels. These findings suggest that expanding the FOV not only enhances the impression of the visual environment but also has the potential to change viewers' mood to a more energetic state.