Individual Realities: Customizing Aesthetics in Shared Immersive Virtual Environments

Abstract

Immersive virtual reality systems such as CAVEs and head-mounted displays offer a unique shared environment for collaborations unavailable in the real world. Virtual environments not only provide users with novel interaction and navigation approaches but each person is also generally provided a unique perspective into the virtual world. Provided each participant sees the virtual environment from a unique display, we argue that a group consensus about the world's aesthetics is often unimportant, unlike in the real world. Each user is able to see a unique custom rendering of the virtual world and we predict no negative impact on other participants. Designing for individual aesthetic preferences also provides numerous potential benefits to system usability including better user satisfaction, an increased sense of presence, and improved task performance. These advantages are discussed in detail. We conclude with a brief discussion about potential experiments intended to clarify both the differences between shared and individual virtual environment aesthetics and the impact aesthetic appeal has on virtual reality usability.