Abstract
The creation or streaming of photo-realistic self-avatars is important for virtual reality applications that aim for perception and action to replicate real world experience. The appearance and recognition of a digital self-avatar may be especially important for applications related to telepresence, embodied virtual reality, or immersive games. We investigated gender differences in the use of visual cues (shape, texture) of a self-avatar for estimating body weight and evaluating avatar appearance. A full-body scanner was used to capture each participant's body geometry and color information and a set of 3D virtual avatars with realistic weight variations was created based on a statistical body model. Additionally, a second set of avatars was created with an average underlying body shape matched to each participant's height and weight. In four sets of psychophysical experiments, the influence of visual cues on the accuracy of body weight estimation and the sensitivity to weight changes was assessed by manipulating body shape (own, average) and texture (own photo-realistic, checkerboard). The avatars were presented on a large-screen display, and participants responded to whether the avatar's weight corresponded to their own weight. Participants also adjusted the avatar's weight to their desired weight and evaluated the avatar's appearance with regard to similarity to their own body, uncanniness, and their willingness to accept it as a digital representation of the self. The results of the psychophysical experiments revealed no gender difference in the accuracy of estimating body weight in avatars. However, males accepted a larger weight range of the avatars as corresponding to their own. In terms of the ideal body weight, females but not males desired a thinner body. With regard to the evaluation of avatar appearance, the questionnaire responses suggest that own photo-realistic texture was more important to males for higher similarity ratings, while own body shape seemed to be more important to females. These results argue for gender-specific considerations when creating self-avatars.
Highlights
Research on space perception in the real world and in virtual realities suggests that the body is important for an accurate perception of spatial layout (Ries et al, 2008; Linkenauger et al, 2010; Mohler et al, 2010; McManus et al, 2011)
We showed that there are some gender differences in the visual perception of self-avatars and in the evaluation of the appearance of self-avatars
Viewing one’s own photo-realistic texture was more important to men for higher ratings of similarity of the avatar’s appearance to their own bodies, while own body shape seemed to be more important to women
Summary
Research on space perception in the real world and in virtual realities suggests that the body is important for an accurate perception of spatial layout (Ries et al, 2008; Linkenauger et al, 2010; Mohler et al, 2010; McManus et al, 2011). It has been suggested that the environment is scaled using one’s own bodily dimensions, such as eye height (Leyrer et al, 2011), body weight (Piryankova et al, 2014b), hand size (Linkenauger et al, 2011), and leg, foot, and arm length (Mark and Vogele, 1987; Jun et al, 2015; Linkenauger et al, 2015) These results argue that humans rely on their visual body dimensions for spatial perception and rapidly adapt their spatial interpretation of the surrounding world to new body dimensions. In recent years, several low-cost 3D body scanning systems, such as commodity depth and camera sensors (Shapiro et al, 2014; Malleson et al, 2017) or Microsoft’s Kinect Sensor have become available for creating self-avatars
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