Increasing the feeling of social presence by incorporating realistic interactions in multi-party VR

Behavioral realism and realistic interactions are major criteria for improving social presence in virtual reality environments. We focus on multi-party VR applications where computer agents and avatars interact, share and collaborate with each other using objects. Our formulation employs realistic a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hai, Wen, Jain, Nisha, Wydra, Andrzej, Thalmann, Nadia Magnenat, Thalmann, Daniel
Other Authors: 31st International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2018)
Format: Conference Paper
Language:English
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147173
Description
Summary:Behavioral realism and realistic interactions are major criteria for improving social presence in virtual reality environments. We focus on multi-party VR applications where computer agents and avatars interact, share and collaborate with each other using objects. Our formulation employs realistic animations to simulate human-like behavioral motions of computer agents while they interact with avatars to enhance the sense of social presence in the VR environment. We exemplify our proposed model in a VR volleyball game setup. We model specific underlying interactions like gazing, collision detection and miscellaneous reactions (like how to pick a volleyball, how to transfer the ball to server) between computers players and avatars in the VR Volleyball game. We conduct a preliminary user survey to illustrate the significance of inclusion of realistic interactions for improving sense of social presence in a multi-party VR environment.