Authors:
Jose L. Soler-Dominguez
1
and
Carlos Gonzalez
2
Affiliations:
1
Instituto de Investigación e Innovación en Bioingenieria (I3B),Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain
;
2
ReplayX (Games and Interactive eXperiences Research Group), Florida Universitaria, C/Rei en Jaume I s/n, 46470, Catarroja, Valencia, Spain
Keyword(s):
Virtual Reality, Cinematic, User Experience, Attention.
Abstract:
The impact of Virtual Reality (VR) as a narrative medium is growing quickly. Opposite to traditional films,
in cinematic VR (cVR) experiences, even when interactions are usually reduced to navigation, users are free to move the camera at their will and could miss relevant scenes while looking at unexpected places inside the virtual environment. Different visual cues have been developed to attract user’s attention and to make them focus on the main narrative stream. Those visual cues usually interfere with the actual storytelling, introducing alien elements and overloading graphically the scene. In this paper, we propose a visual postprocessing technique that applied to a VR camera will guide the user to look at where the relevant narrative events are expected to happen using dynamic visual layers. This technique, narratively aseptic, could be applied to different storytelling scenarios and is based on the Gaussian blur effect: the greater the angle between the user’s vision and the
area of interest is, the more blurred the content will be displayed. Moreover, a visual guide is displayed to help the user to know at every moment the way to the area of interest. GPU shaders are used in order to not affect the performance. Additionally, metrics will be proposed in order to measure the effects of this technique on presence and agency, the most significant subjective parameters of User Experience in VR.
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