Sensitivity to Redirected Walking Considering Gaze, Posture, and Luminance.

Abstract

We study the correlations between redirected walking (RDW) rotation gains and patterns in users' posture and gaze data during locomotion in virtual reality (VR). To do this, we conducted a psychophysical experiment to measure users' sensitivity to RDW rotation gains and collect gaze and posture data during the experiment. Using multilevel modeling, we studied how different factors of the VR system and user affected their physiological signals. In particular, we studied the effects of redirection gain, trial duration, trial number (i.e., time spent in VR), and participant gender on postural sway, gaze velocity (a proxy for gaze stability), and saccade and blink rate. Our results showed that, in general, physiological signals were significantly positively correlated with the strength of redirection gain, the duration of trials, and the trial number. Gaze velocity was negatively correlated with trial duration. Additionally, we measured users' sensitivity to rotation gains in well-lit (photopic) and dimly-lit (mesopic) virtual lighting conditions. Results showed that there were no significant differences in RDW detection thresholds between the photopic and mesopic luminance conditions.