Intensifying Stress Perception Using Visual Effects in VR Games

PubDate: September 2020

Teams: Interactive Reality Experiences Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts；Leibniz University Hannover

Writers: Sebastian Misztal；Guillermo Carbonell；Lysann Zander；Jonas Schild

PDF: Intensifying Stress Perception Using Visual Effects in VR Games

Abstract

Visual effects are used in commercial video games to enhance the players’ perception without being investigated in terms of their actual impact on the players. In our work, we implemented five visual effects, namely vignetting, image noise, chromatic aberration, color grading, and blur and investigated their impact on the players’ perceived stress, presence, and simulator sickness. A user study (N = 6), conducted with a virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD), shows that these visual effects can intensify the players’ stress perception without negatively effecting perceived presence and without increasing simulator sickness.