Exploring Terminology for Perception of Motion in Virtual Reality

Abstract

A key aspect of Virtual Reality (VR) applications is the ability to move in the environment, which relies on the illusion of self-motion to create a good user experience. Self-motion has traditionally been studied in psychophysical studies in which a range of wording has been adopted to describe self-motion. However, it is not clear from current research whether the words used in self-motion studies match study participants’ own intuitions about the experience of self-motion. We argue that the terminology used in self-motion studies should be drawn from a participant perspective to improve validity. We undertook an online study involving VR self-motion and card-sorting with 50 participants to examine current self-motion terminology. We found that participants were not familiar with the concept of self-motion and that the virtual scene itself might suggest different terminology. We suggest how studies on motion perception in VR should be designed to better reflect participants’ vernacular.