New Publication: Investigating Behavioral Realism in AR and VR

How realistic do virtual humans need to be to provide an immersive and compelling social XR experience? Our latest study examines the effects of different animation techniques - single-point inverse kinematics (IK) versus full-body motion capture - on the perception of behavioral realism in augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) for multiple users. In an experiment with 36 participants, we analyzed how users in AR and VR rated the realism of other people when avatars were animated with either single-point IK or motion capture. In addition, we investigated whether the congruence between visual realism and tracking quality plays an important role. Our results show that animations based on motion capture led to higher perceived behavioral realism, while single-point IC - despite its limitations - was still rated positively. Interestingly, device type had no effect on the results, and the congruence between visual realism and tracking quality appeared to be less crucial than expected.

These findings contribute to the ongoing discussion about the trade-off between realism and technical feasibility in multi-user XR applications and support the development of more accessible and effective avatar animation methods. A link to the publication can be found here: ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10918246