Effects of personal relevance and simulated darkness on the affective appraisal of a virtual environment

This study investigated whether personal relevance influences the affective appraisal of a desktop virtual environment (VE) in simulated darkness. In the real world, darkness often evokes thoughts of vulnerability, threat, and danger, and may automatically precipitate emotional responses consonant with those thoughts (fear of darkness). This...

Emotional responses to Multisensory Environmental Stimuli: A conceptual framework and literature review

How we perceive our environment affects the way we feel and behave. The impressions of our ambient environment are influenced by its entire spectrum of physical characteristics (e.g., luminosity, sound, scents, temperature) in a dynamic and interactive way. The ability to manipulate the sensory aspects of an environment such that people feel...

Effects of third person perspective on affective appraisal and engagement: Findings from SECOND LIFE

This study investigates the influence of a first-person perspective (1PP) and a third-person perspective (3PP), respectively, on the affective appraisal and on the user engagement of a three-dimensional virtual environment in SECOND LIFE. Participants explored the environment while searching for five targets during a limited time span, using...

Cybersickness Influences the Affective Appraisal of a Virtual Environment

We investigated if cybersickness has an effect on the affective appraisal of a virtual environment (VE). For many applications it is essential that users experience the simulated environment in a similar way as the corresponding real one. Navigation through VEs is known to negatively influence the physical well-being of observers by inducing...

Thunderstorms in my computer: The effect of visual dynamics and sound in a 3D environment

We assessed the effects of the addition of dynamic visual elements and sounds to a levee patroller training game on the appraisal of the environment and weather conditions, the engagement of the users and their performance. Results show that the combination of visual dynamics and sounds best conveys the impression of severe weather conditions...

Engagement and EMG in serious gaming: Experimenting with sound and dynamics in the levee patroller training game

We measured the effects of sound and visual dynamic elements on user experience of a serious game, with special interest in engagement and arousal. Engagement was measured through questionnaires and arousal through the SAM and electromyography (EMG). We adopted the EMG of the corrugator (frown muscle) and the zygomatic muscle (smile muscle) as...

Cybersickness and desktop simulations: field of view effects and user experience

We used a desktop computer game environment to study the effect Field-of-View (FOV) on cybersickness. In particular, we examined the effect of differences between the internal FOV (iFOV, the FOV which the graphics generator is using to render its images) and the external FOV (eFOV, the FOV of the presented images as seen from the physical...