What We Don’t Know. The Effect of Realism in Virtual Reality on Experience and Behaviour

This study addresses the question how realistic Virtual Worlds should be designed in order to create engaging experiences and stimulate ‘natural’ behaviour. Creating high realistic worlds is time consuming and expensive and it is unclear whether it is always needed. With the aim of gaining insights about questions related to presence and realism, an experiment involving 72 participants was set up upon a Virtual Reality cycling apparatus in which different levels of realism were created. Users were observed and evaluated regarding their experience (engagement, presence, naturalness and negative effects), awareness of realism and behaviour. The results indicate that, despite that differences in realism were observed, differences in realism do not have an effect on experience and behaviour. There seem other variables involved that can affect the whole experience in an enough intensity to obliterate the effects of a better sense of presence and realism. In addition, an increase in a perceived higher level of realism seems to be depended on a congruent increase of different elements within the virtual world. Merely increasing the level of realism of one element does not alter levels of perceived realism of users.