Design of Body Transformation Experience

Abstract

Humans can feel an illusory body ownership towards bodies that are different from the real one. It has been well studied how the virtual embodiment can be realized and what can be embodied. However, it is not clear how we feel when our body changes from one body to another. We aimed to provide different experiences of body transformation by varying the transition patterns of avatars. We created five types of avatar transitions. In Flicker process, the body appearance changes instantly from one avatar to another, but with a blank screen in the middle. In Cut process, the body appearance changes instantly without blank. In Smooth process, the avatar's body appearance transforms gradually and smoothly according to a smoothstep function. In Linear process, the avatar's body appearance transforms gradually according to a linear function. InWave process, the avatar's body appearance transforms like a wave or back and forth according to a mixture of linear function and sinusoidal function. We expect that participants will be the most aware of body transformation in the Wave transition followed by Linear and Smooth transitions. The Flicker and Cut transitions are natural and less noticed by participants.