Evaluation Topics: Body-Ownership

Body Ownership

If appropriate tracking and mapping is performed, then the user may experience an illusion of virtual body ownership, the experience that an artificial body is in face one's own physical body. The Rubber Hand illusion is a well-known illusion, which has been researched significantly. Example: The Rubber Hand Illusion

article 1: Body Illusion: the rubber hand in virtual reality

Extended or add-on body parts: body ownership, agency and threat

Ownership may be even experienced over non-human virtual bodies and over additional limbs (such as virtual tail, see Ann Lasko-Harvill's 90s work and Human Tails: Ownership and Control of Extended Humanoid Avatars). It may influence one's perspective, attitudes and actions. There are some guidelines for creating Body Ownership that need to be followed: (source Virtual Reality and the Senses)

  • A first person perspective is central to the experience of ownership of the virtual body.

  • Visual proprioceptive cues can elicit the illusion when the user views a virtual body that spatially overlaps with the real body from a first person perspective.

  • When spatial overlap or realism of virtual body is limited, multi sensory cues are necessary in order to elicit the illusion.

Below you can find the variables, try it out for your own experience.

Ownership variables

  • mybody: I felt as if the body I saw in the game might be my body.

  • tailpartofbody: I felt as if the tail was a part of the body I saw in the game.

  • realtail: At times during the game, I imagined that I had a real tail.

  • taillikearmslegs: I considered the tail to be as much of a part of the body as the arms and legs were.

Agency variables

  • mymovements: Not considering the tail, the movements of the body I saw in the game seemed to be my movements.

  • tailcontrol: I could easily move the tail to where I wanted.

  • notailcontrol: The tail seemed to be moving from around on its own.

  • learnedtail: I learned how to control the tail more accurately as the game went on.

  • tailnatural: There were times in the game that moving the tail came naturally to me.

Threat variables

  • anxiousbody: I felt anxious when the body was on fire.

  • extinguishbody: I tried to avoid or extinguish the flames in some way when the body was on fire.

  • harmedbody: I had the feeling that I might be harmed when the body was on fire.

  • anxioustail: I felt anxious when the tail was on fire.

  • extinguishtail: I tried to avoid or extinguish the flames in some way when the tail was on fire.

  • harmedtail: I had the feeling that I might be harmed when the tail was on fire.

Other papers

Observing Your Own Body Walking Away

This video shows the translation of a real world environment into a virtual point cloud (by using two Kinect sensors) and viewed through an Oculus Rift VR headset. The red and white point clouds shown in the video distinguish the two Kinect sensors. An out-of-body VR Experience using Kinect and Oculus

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