Intersecting realms: a cross-disciplinary examination of VR quality of experience research

Abstract

The advent of virtual reality (VR) technology has necessitated a reevaluation of quality of experience (QoE) models. While numerous recent efforts have been dedicated to creating comprehensive QoE frameworks it seems that the majority of the factors studied as potential influencers of QoE are often limited to single disciplinary viewpoints or specific user-related aspects. Furthermore, the majority of literature reviews in this domain seem to have predominantly focused on academic sources, overlooking industry insights. To address these points, the current research took an interdisciplinary literature review approach to examine QoE literature covering both academic and industry sources from diverse fields (i.e., psychology, ergonomics, user experience, communication science, and engineering). Based on this rich dataset, we created a QoE model that illustrated 252 factors grouped into four branches - user, system, context, and content. The main finding of this review emphasized the substantial gap in the current research landscape, where complex interactions among user, system, context, and content factors in VR are overlooked. The current research not only identified this crucial disparity in existing QoE studies but also provided a substantial online repository of over 200 QoE-related factors. The repository serves as an indispensable tool for future researchers aiming to construct a more holistic understanding of QoE.