A longstanding debate within the tech community is that 360 video isn’t really VR. The argument – in one corner – is fully interactive CGI environments can only truly be classified ‘virtual reality’ whilst 360 video – in the other corner – is cited as a creative medium for immersive experiences. To referee the fight, we asked a psychologist, Dr Ali Goode, to consider the argument from the perspective of the human psychological experience.
Can psychology finally answer this perennial question?
Whilst both formats necessitate a VR headset, there are significant differences. Fully interactive CGI (Computer Generated Image) virtual experiences provide six degrees of freedom (6DOF) so the environment responds to head movement (roll, yaw, pitch), physical movement (right/left, up/down, forward/back) and the ability to interact with virtual objects. 360 video provides three degrees of freedom (3DOF) so relies purely on head movement from a fixed position (roll, yaw, pitch) to be immersed in real world footage as opposed to a computer generated version.
Putting aside the differences in costs and timelines: what does the psychology say?
The main appeal of VR is the immersion in experiences (or qualia to give them their correct name) which induce an illusion of presence even though the person ‘cognitively’ knows they are not there. This sense of presence is mediated by three main illusions:
Place Illusion is where a person experiences the scene as if they were actually there i.e. things getting closer / further away depending on their movement and they consistently occupy the same spacial area.
Plausibility Illusion is where things respond as if the person is actually there i.e. pick objects up, move things around and receive haptic feedback when interacting with the virtual world.
Body Ownership Illusion is the sense of occupying the space of an avatar and, through a process called proprioceptive drift, a person feels like the avatar is actually their own body. This increases when the avatar looks similar to the person’s actual body and the visual sensory feedback is identical to the persons own movements. i.e. the person’s arm movement is accurately mimicked by the avatar’s arm.
According to these psychological principles, the maximum sense of presence is therefore induced by a person wearing a motion capture suit in a room-scale CGI environment with an avatar that looks similar to them. In this situation, when the person moves they can see their avatar move and the world around them reacts as if they were actually present. However studies show that, despite this being the optimal way of inducing a sense of presence, it is by no means the only way.
In our work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, people who viewed a 360 video of a live play (using a VR headset) reported high levels of ‘presence’. In this situation, people don’t move around when they’re watching a theatre performance from a fixed position so it didn’t break the illusion of presence. Similarly, because people don’t interact with anything, or look at their body in a dark theatre, this didn’t break any sense of the illusion.
We’ve experimented with the Body Ownership Illusion. People are asked to adopt the body position of a fixed avatar whilst other elements interact with the avatar. Even though the avatar was androgynous, 95% of people reported the Body Ownership Illusion. The experience is created in a way that the interactions are plausible i.e. objects touch the avatar lightly as opposed to a somatosensory (touch based) feedback. Even so, the ability for this to create the Body Ownership Illusion is reported as being a strong indicator of giving people a sense of presence.
We’ve also tried the Positron Voyager VR chair (there a few of these products on the market) which move sympathetically to movements in a VR headset. Interestingly, the headset was viewed from a fixed position however the movement of the chair did add to the sense of presence. The body can sense many movements in all directions both linear (moving in a direction) and rotational. The slight tilting backward and forward of the chair did help induce the sense of presence however Voyager was able to match the rotational movements exactly. When the experience did shoot off in a direction, linear movement was matched by a strong rotational motion which was enough to kid the inner ear not to notice you’re actually not moving.
Back to the debate about whether 360 video can be called virtual reality.
It’s actually the wrong question to ask as it’s focussed on the technology rather than the user experience. The more helpful question is to ask: to what extent can fully interactive CGI environments and 360 video induce a sense of presence? They both produce a very compelling sense of presence however the sense of presence is easier to break in 360 video. This is because the environment does not respond to body movements and people can’t interact with things in the environment. The sense of presence can be broken in room scale CGI environments however the tolerance levels are broader.
This has implications for VR as a consumer research tool and the need to use the appropriate format based on the research objectives.
VR car clinics involve qualitative research into new car designs from different angles and being able to walk around a 1:1 scale model. VR shelf tests, however, only require a view of the shelf from a fixed position in a supermarket to induce the Place illusion so qual experiences can be delivered to a quant panel. It’s therefore a case of using the right tool for the right job. It isn’t a question of whether 360 video is virtual reality, it’s how good these experiences are at inducing a sense of presence. Under different conditions, they’re both easily capable of doing so.
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