Effects of body visualization on performance in head-mounted display virtual reality

Area of Science:

• Sports Science
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Virtual Reality

Background:

• Virtual reality (VR) applications in sports often lack full body visualization.
• Understanding the impact of virtual body representation on performance fidelity is crucial for VR development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of visualizing different body parts in VR on task performance.
• To compare human performance in real-world versus VR environments.
• To provide guidelines for virtual body presentation in VR sports.

Main Methods:

• 20 healthy participants performed balance, grasping, and throwing tasks in real and virtual environments.
• Tasks were completed with varying levels of virtual body visualization (whole-body, partial body, no body).
• Performance metrics included time, errors, foot strikes, and subjective difficulty.

Main Results:

• Whole-body visualization improved accuracy in the throwing task and performance in the balance task.
• No significant impact of body visualization was found for the grasping task.
• Significant differences between reality and VR were observed in task completion time and perceived difficulty, but not in error rates or performance quality.

Conclusions:

• Visualizing the whole body in VR is recommended for sports applications to enhance performance and fidelity.
• While VR performance may differ in time and perceived difficulty, objective performance quality can be maintained.
• This study provides foundational insights for designing effective VR sports interventions and experiences.