Abstract
Virtual Reality has become readily available in the last few years through different devices, from desktop computers to head-mounted displays (HMD). Also, virtual tours became popular with 360º panoramic photographs and video clips on online social media, so people could visit remote locations without being exposed to crowded transportation or long travels. Also, virtual tours demonstrate considerable potential as a form of escapism and even for remote teaching. Since we lack studies that evaluate the User Experience (UX) in virtual tours on different devices, this article aims to compare aspects of the User Experience (regarding sense of presence, cybersickness, and usability) in a virtual tour website developed in WebXR across different devices. To achieve our objective, we developed a virtual tour based on 360º pictures using WebXR API and React 360 framework and conducted an experiment with 41 undergraduate students using four different devices: a laptop computer, a smartphone, a Google Cardboard headset, and a Samsung Gear VR HMD. We evaluated users’ perceptions by adapting and translating the Suitability Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) and users’ performance by measuring the time to fulfill a set of tasks. The main findings from this study include that (i) the overall self-reported experience using Google Cardboard is worse than using other devices, (ii) the users’ performance is quite similar between the platforms, (iii) there is evidence of unexpected cybersickness symptoms in tests with the smartphone, and (iv) the development of a plausible hypothesis concerning low usability having an effect upon the sense of presence. Additional contributions of our research are the adaptation, translation into Portuguese, psychometric analysis, and revised scoring procedures of the SEQ.
Highlights
Even though Virtual Reality (VR) had been created more than 40 years ago1 according to Costa and Ribeiro (2009), it has evolved and it has become more accessible. Parisi (2015) and Jerald (2016) state that VR aims to convince the users that they are somewhere else using the illusion of presence and immersion to change their physiological and psycholog ical condition
We developed a virtual tour based on 360o pictures using WebXR API and React 360 framework and conducted an experiment with 41 undergraduate students using four different devices: a laptop computer, a smartphone, a Google Cardboard headset, and a Samsung Gear VR headmounted displays (HMD)
We developed a virtual tour in UNIPAMPA using WebXR and React 360 technologies, and carried out a case study with 41 participants
Summary
Even though Virtual Reality (VR) had been created more than 40 years ago according to Costa and Ribeiro (2009), it has evolved and it has become more accessible. Parisi (2015) and Jerald (2016) state that VR aims to convince the users that they are somewhere else using the illusion of presence and immersion to change their physiological and psycholog ical condition. One of the first virtual tours was an installation in a British Museum in 1994 as presented by Boland and Johnson (1996) and Pu jol (2004): the representation of Dudley Castle (England) as it had been in the year 1550. When this kind of application is available on the web, it usually simulates places through 360o pictures or videos as it is done by many universities worldwide as described by Osman et al (2009)
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