Overcome Acrophobia with the Help of Virtual Reality and Kinect Technology

Abstract

There are many people in this world who are feared of high places. In general, there are two types of people: the prior one is people that are afraid of height and the latter one is people who really cannot handle high places (i.e. acrophobia). The purpose of this research is to reduce acrophobia level of people. The methodology which is used in this research is experiment with the help of virtual reality to simulate virtual world of high places environment as the reality in the imagination of the user. The virtual environment helps the sufferer to reduce their fear of height in a safe and controllable environment. This research shows that virtual reality is able to mimic real high places and train the users to overcome their anxiety of high places. With virtual world, the users are able to confront their fear gradually based on the level progression in the virtual world. Thus, it gives the users more experience to handle their fear in the secured environment and gradually decrease their anxiety level of acrophobia.