Virtual travel collisions: Response method influences perceived realism of virtual environments

Travel methods are the most basic and widespread interaction method with virtual environments. They are the primary and often the only way the user interactively experiences the environment. We present a study composed of three experiments that investigates how virtual collisions methods and feedback impact user perception of the realism of collisions and the virtual environment. A wand-based virtual travel method was used to navigate maze environments in an immersive projective system. The results indicated that the introduction of collision handling significantly improved the user's perception of the realism of the environment and collisions. An effect of feedback on the perceived level of realism of collisions and solidity of the environment was also found. Our results indicate that feedback should be context appropriate, e.g. fitting to a collision with the object; yet, the modality and richness of feedback were only important in that traditional color change feedback did not perform as well as audio or haptic feedback. In combination, the experiments indicated that in immersive virtual environments the stop collision handling method produced a more realistic impression than the slide method that is popular in games. In total, the study suggests that feedback fitting the collision context, coupled with the stop handling method, provides the best perceived realism of collisions and scene.