Psychological Effect of Telescope Virtual Screens using VR Headset

We carried out a psychological experiment using Virtua Reality Head Mount Display (VR-HMD) with small FOV (Field of view) camera and a screen in virtual environment, telescope virtual screen, to analyze the change of subjects’ pain tolerance. We manipulate FOV of the virtual camera in VR to change the view of contents. Decreasing FOV makes view of angle narrow, therefore the view in VR looks similar to the one using telephoto lens, in which environment the view greatly moves with even small camera movement. With smaller value of FOV for a virtual camera, the view in VR is more sensitive to VR-HMD movement and requires subjects to keep concentrating not to move their heads to watch target properly. Hand immersion into cold water is a standard test for pain tolerance evaluation and is known as the cold pressor test. Cold pressor test with the VRHMD shows that pain tolerance was increased with telescope virtual screen environment. The result indicates that pain tolerance can be controlled with VR-HMD without meaningful contents. The contents independent pain management technique can potentially be used in various applications especially in medical field.