The Effect of 2D Stylized Visualization of the Real World for Obstacle Avoidance and Safety in Virtual Reality System Usage

Using virtual reality systems with the head-mounted display can incur interaction difficulties and safety problems because of the user’s view being isolated from the real world operating space. One possible solution is to super-impose the real world objects or environment information onto the virtual scene. A variety of such visualization methods have been proposed, all in hopes of minimizing the negative effects of introducing foreign elements to the original virtual scene. In this poster, we propose to apply the neural style transfer technique to blend in the real world operating environment in the style of the given virtual space to make the super-imposed resulting image as natural as possible, maintaining the sense of immersion with the least level of distraction. Our pilot experimental study has shown that the stylization obscured the clear presentation of the environment and worsened or did not improve the safe user performance, and was neither considered sufficiently natural.