Exaggeration of Avatar Flexibility in Virtual Reality

Empowerment of movement through superhuman strength and flexibility is a staple of action video game design. However, relatively little work has been done on the same in the context of Virtual Reality and exergames, especially outside the most obvious parameters such as jumping height and locomotion speed. We contribute a controlled experiment (N=30) of exaggerating avatar flexibility in a martial arts kicking task. We compared different settings for a nonlinear mapping from real to virtual hip rotations, with the aim of increasing the avatar's range of movement and kicking height. Our results show that users prefer medium exaggeration over realistic or grossly exaggerated flexibility. Medium exaggeration also yields significantly higher kicking performance as well as perceived competence and naturalness. The results are similar both in 1st and 3rd person views. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of exaggerated flexibility in VR, and the results suggest that the approach offers many benefits to VR and exergame design.