Recently, there has been growing interest in investigating the effects of self-representation on user experience and perception in virtual environments. However, few studies investigated the effects of levels of body representation (full-body, lower-body and viewpoint) on locomotion experience in terms of spatial awareness, self-presence and spatial presence during virtual locomotion. Understanding such effects is essential for building new virtual locomotion systems with better locomotion experience. In the present study, we first built a walking-in-place (WIP) virtual locomotion system that can represent users using avatars at three levels (full-body, lower-body and viewpoint) and is capable of rendering walking animations during in-place walking of a user. We then conducted a virtual locomotion experiment using three levels of representation to investigate the effects of body representation on spatial awareness, self-presence and spatial presence during virtual locomotion. Experimental results showed that the full-body representation provided better virtual locomotion experience in these three factors compared to that of the lower-body representation and the viewpoint representation. The lower-body representation also provided better experience than the viewpoint representation. These results suggest that self-representation of users in virtual environments using a full-body avatar is critical for providing better locomotion experience. Using full-body avatars for self-representation of users should be considered when building new virtual locomotion systems and applications.

翻译：近年来，关于自我表征在虚拟环境中对用户体验与感知影响的研究日益受到关注。然而，目前鲜有研究探讨身体表征层次（全身、下半身与视点）在虚拟移动过程中对空间感知、自我临场感及空间临场感的影响。理解此类效应对于构建具有更优移动体验的新型虚拟移动系统至关重要。本研究首先构建了一套原地行走（WIP）虚拟移动系统，该系统能够使用三种层次（全身、下半身与视点）的虚拟化身表征用户，并在用户原地行走时呈现行走动画。随后，我们通过三种表征层次的虚拟移动实验，探究了身体表征对虚拟移动过程中空间感知、自我临场感与空间临场感的影响。实验结果表明：与下半身表征及视点表征相比，全身表征在上述三个维度上提供了更佳的虚拟移动体验；同时，下半身表征的表现亦优于视点表征。这些发现表明，在虚拟环境中使用全身虚拟化身对用户进行自我表征，对于提供更优移动体验至关重要。在构建新型虚拟移动系统及应用时，应考虑采用全身虚拟化身进行用户自我表征。