The impact of enhanced projector display on the responses of people to a violent scenario in immersive virtual reality

Abstract

This paper describes the impact of display resolution and luminance on the responses of participants in a behavioral study that used a projection-based Immersive Virtual Reality System. The scenario was a virtual bar where participants witnessed a violent attack of one person on another due to an argument about support for a soccer club. The major response variable was the number of interventions made by participants. The study was between-groups with 10 participants in two groups pre-upgrade and post-upgrade, both in the same 4-screen Cave-like system. However, the post-upgrade group experienced the scenario with projectors that had a significantly higher level of resolution and luminance than those experienced by the pre-upgrade group. The results show that, other things being equal, the number of both verbal and physical interventions was greater amongst those in the post-upgrade group compared to the pre-upgrade group.