TY - JOUR A1 - Bartl, Andrea A1 - Wenninger, Stephan A1 - Wolf, Erik A1 - Botsch, Mario A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich T1 - Affordable but not cheap: a case study of the effects of two 3D-reconstruction methods of virtual humans JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality N2 - Realistic and lifelike 3D-reconstruction of virtual humans has various exciting and important use cases. Our and others’ appearances have notable effects on ourselves and our interaction partners in virtual environments, e.g., on acceptance, preference, trust, believability, behavior (the Proteus effect), and more. Today, multiple approaches for the 3D-reconstruction of virtual humans exist. They significantly vary in terms of the degree of achievable realism, the technical complexities, and finally, the overall reconstruction costs involved. This article compares two 3D-reconstruction approaches with very different hardware requirements. The high-cost solution uses a typical complex and elaborated camera rig consisting of 94 digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras. The recently developed low-cost solution uses a smartphone camera to create videos that capture multiple views of a person. Both methods use photogrammetric reconstruction and template fitting with the same template model and differ in their adaptation to the method-specific input material. Each method generates high-quality virtual humans ready to be processed, animated, and rendered by standard XR simulation and game engines such as Unreal or Unity. We compare the results of the two 3D-reconstruction methods in an immersive virtual environment against each other in a user study. Our results indicate that the virtual humans from the low-cost approach are perceived similarly to those from the high-cost approach regarding the perceived similarity to the original, human-likeness, beauty, and uncanniness, despite significant differences in the objectively measured quality. The perceived feeling of change of the own body was higher for the low-cost virtual humans. Quality differences were perceived more strongly for one’s own body than for other virtual humans. KW - virtual humans KW - 3D-reconstruction methods KW - avatars KW - agents KW - user study Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-260492 VL - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gall, Dominik A1 - Roth, Daniel A1 - Stauffert, Jan-Philipp A1 - Zarges, Julian A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich T1 - Embodiment in Virtual Reality Intensifies Emotional Responses to Virtual Stimuli JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Modulating emotional responses to virtual stimuli is a fundamental goal of many immersive interactive applications. In this study, we leverage the illusion of illusory embodiment and show that owning a virtual body provides means to modulate emotional responses. In a single-factor repeated-measures experiment, we manipulated the degree of illusory embodiment and assessed the emotional responses to virtual stimuli. We presented emotional stimuli in the same environment as the virtual body. Participants experienced higher arousal, dominance, and more intense valence in the high embodiment condition compared to the low embodiment condition. The illusion of embodiment thus intensifies the emotional processing of the virtual environment. This result suggests that artificial bodies can increase the effectiveness of immersive applications psychotherapy, entertainment, computer-mediated social interactions, or health applications. KW - embodiment KW - virtual body ownership KW - avatars KW - agency KW - immersive interfaces KW - human-computer interaction KW - affective computing KW - emotions Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-245624 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Oberdörfer, Sebastian A1 - Schraudt, David A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich T1 - Embodied gambling — investigating the influence of level of embodiment, avatar appearance, and virtual environment design on an online VR slot machine JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality N2 - Slot machines are one of the most played games by players suffering from gambling disorder. New technologies like immersive Virtual Reality (VR) offer more possibilities to exploit erroneous beliefs in the context of gambling. Recent research indicates a higher risk potential when playing a slot machine in VR than on desktop. To continue this investigation, we evaluate the effects of providing different degrees of embodiment, i.e., minimal and full embodiment. The avatars used for the full embodiment further differ in their appearance, i.e., they elicit a high or a low socio-economic status. The virtual environment (VE) design can cause a potential influence on the overall gambling behavior. Thus, we also embed the slot machine in two different VEs that differ in their emotional design: a colorful underwater playground environment and a virtual counterpart of our lab. These design considerations resulted in four different versions of the same VR slot machine: 1) full embodiment with high socio-economic status, 2) full embodiment with low socio-economic status, 3) minimal embodiment playground VE, and 4) minimal embodiment laboratory VE. Both full embodiment versions also used the playground VE. We determine the risk potential by logging gambling frequency as well as stake size, and measuring harm-inducing factors, i.e., dissociation, urge to gamble, dark flow, and illusion of control, using questionnaires. Following a between groups experimental design, 82 participants played for 20 game rounds one of the four versions. We recruited our sample from the students enrolled at the University of Würzburg. Our safety protocol ensured that only participants without any recent gambling activity took part in the experiment. In this comparative user study, we found no effect of the embodiment nor VE design on neither the gambling frequency, stake sizes, nor risk potential. However, our results provide further support for the hypothesis of the higher visual angle on gambling stimuli and hence the increased emotional response being the true cause for the higher risk potential. KW - virtual reality KW - virtual environments KW - immersion KW - gambling KW - risks KW - embodiment KW - avatars Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-284662 SN - 2673-4192 VL - 3 ER -