Still not as real as real
As the researchers continued to spend time immersed in passthrough video, however, significant imperfections became apparent that impacted how users felt and would likely pose problems for frequent headset wearing.
In the headset, peripheral vision is lost and users can only take in around half of what humans normally see. And the gadgets still cannot quite match the sharpness of natural vision. Distortion occurs as well – a sort of “funhouse mirror” effect with objects’ shapes and dimensions appearing unnatural or morphing – and there was a just-noticeable lag in the display changing when users move their heads to a new view.
“Even though the world you are looking at is real, it certainly has a video-game-like ‘otherness’ to it,” said Brown.
These issues manifested as users often underestimating distances to objects. For example, giving “high fives” proved challenging, and when users tried bringing a spoon to their mouths when eating, the headset view suggested the spoon had reached their lips, though, in reality, the spoon hovered a few inches away.
While headset wearers learned to account for these inaccuracies, what concerns Bailenson’s team is the extent to which such overcompensation could linger after prolonged headset usage.
“The companies making these headsets want you to wear them all day, but what are the aftereffects and how long do they last?” Bailenson said. “A plausible scenario could be walking down a flight of stairs and you miss a step, or driving a car and you misjudge distances.”
All these effects contributed to profound feelings of what is known in this research as “social absence.” Instances of this included “challenges of discerning distant facial expressions,” noted by Wang, and the “lack of eye gaze,” reported by Santoso. “People in the outside world became very absent, as if we were watching them on TV,” Bailenson said. “The person walking or cycling by or sitting near you didn’t feel physically real.”
A final problem the team encountered in their field tests was simulator sickness, a kind of motion sickness long-documented in virtual reality and first-person gaming.
“When your eyes see the world move one way, and your body experiences it differently, simulator sickness can follow,” said Bailenson. “I was surprised because all 11 of us in this study are headset veterans, but even from relatively short periods of use, we tended to feel uncomfortable.”
Adapting and moderating
Given their experiences, the Stanford researchers recommend that mixed reality headset users proceed cautiously as they adjust to the medium rather than dive into day-long binges.
Bailenson specifically advocates for users of mixed reality products – as well as the headset manufacturers themselves – to consider reducing the amount of time in the headset and taking breaks.
“There is great potential for passthrough video headsets across all kinds of applications,” said Bailenson. “But there are pitfalls as well that can lessen the user experience, from feelings of social absence to motion sickness, and aftereffects that could possibly even be dangerous.”
Bailenson is a professor in the Department of Communication, a senior fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and a member of Stanford Bio-X, the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.
Pages: 1 · 2