The Sense of Presence and Performance within Virtual Environments as a Function of Headtracking and Stereopsis

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the sense of presence and the accuracy of a wire tracing task varied as a function of the presence or absence of stereopsis and headtracking. Ten subjects were presented with a 3D wire on a CRT display. Subjects were asked: (1) to navigate a virtual stylus along the wire with the objective of keeping the stylus centered on the wire, and (2) to complete a survey focusing on perceived presence. The results indicated that both headtracking and stereopsis improved performance in terms of minimizing rms error, however the survey results did not indicate that headtracking and stereopsis increased the sense of presence compared to the absence of these cues.