Introduction
Jonas Schild, Joseph J. LaViola Jr., and Maic Masuch collaborated together to complete their study of "Understanding User Experience in Stereoscopic 3D Games." They presented their paper at the CHI conference in May of 2012 in Austin, TX. Jonas Schild and Maic Masuch are from the University of Duisburg-Essen Forsthausweg 2 in Germany. Schild's research interests include entertainment computing and stereoscopic 3D games. Masuch is interested in the development of interactive multimedia systems. Joseph LaViola is from the University of Central Florida. LaViola's interests in lie in computer graphics, user interface, and virtual reality.Summary
Schild, et al. wanted to explore the actual impact that games played in 3D stereo had on players versus those played in 2D displays. They also wanted to compare the effects between different target groups and different game concepts. They decided to compare males to females. They choose three games with very different concepts: James Cameron's Avatar: The Game, Blur, and Trine. Avatar is a third-person 3D action game, Blur is a racing game, and Trine is an action-adventure game. All three games were played with similar keyboard keys and were relatively similar in game mechanics and tasks. There were sixty participants; twenty-six were male and thirty-four were female. Each participant played one of the games in both stereoscopic vision and monoscopic vision. |
| Figure 1: A participant playing one of the games |
Related Work Not Referenced in the Paper
The general area of stereoscopic vision has had much previous research. The authors did list and explain some of the previous research, but I think they tried to make their work seem more novel that it actually was. The following list shows some of related work previously done:1. Yeh, Yei-Yu, and Louis D. Silverstein. "Spatial Judgments with Monoscopic and Stereoscopic Presentation of Perspective Displays." Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. 34.5 (1992): 583-600. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
In Schild, et al.'s paper, the authors compared how stereoscopic vision compared to monoscopic vision in games. In Yeh and Silversetein's paper, they studied how space was judged between a stereoscopic presentation and a monoscopic presentation. The depth that people perceive affects how users interact with the environment. It affects the user's orientation and perception in the environment.
2. Singer, Michael J., Jennifer Ehrlich, and Stephen Cinq-Mars. "Task Performance in Virtual Environments: Stereoscopic Versus Monoscopic Displays and Head-Coupling." (1995): n.pag. STIC Online: Information for the Defense Community. Web. 4 Sep 2012.
Singer, et al. looked at how stereoscopic presentations affected the training of dismounted soldiers in Virtual Environments. They compared this to the monoscopic version of the Virtual Environment. They used training program tasks and general soldier tasks to test the effects. Singer, et al.'s paper is just a practical application of Schild, et al.'s work.
3. Dang, Thao, Soren Kammel, et al. "Path Planning for Autonomous Driving Based on Stereoscopic and Monoscopic Vision Cues." Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems. (2006): 191-196. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Thao, et al. explored how stereoscopic and monoscopic perspectives can be used together to perform path planning for autonomous driving. This can be compared to the Blur driving game that was used in "Understanding User Experience."
4. Werkhoven, Peter J., and Joris Groen. "Manipulation Performance in Interactive Virtual Environments."Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. 40.3 (1998): 432-42. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Werkhoven and Groen compared monoscopic and stereoscopic views to see how speed and accuracy of controllers can be manipulated. This can be considered another side of Schild, et al.'s work. While Schild, et al. consider the users are affected by stereoscopic vision, Werkhoven and Groen look at the accuracy of the use of controllers when participants use them.
5. Ogle, Kenneth N. "On the limits of stereoscopic vision."Journal of Experimental Psychology. 44.4 (1952): 253-259. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
Ogle's work is significantly older than some of the other work done on stereoscopic vision, but it still applies to today's studies. He looked at how the brain try to compromise the stereoscopic perception of depth and how it is limiting. This is what causes the symptoms of sickness in Schild, et al.'s study. It give a psychological perspective to this HCI work.
6. Woods, Andrew, Tom Docherty, and Rolf Koch. "Image Distortions in Stereoscopic Video Systems."Proceedings of SPIE 1915. (1993): n. page. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
Woods, et al. analyzed in depth how stereoscopic video systems are not perfect. There are few distortions that can be avoided or minimized. However, there are still others that cannot be completely eliminated. Schild, et al. can use this work to help reduce sickness symptoms for people playing games in stereoscopic vision.
7. Freeman, Ralph D. "Stereoscopic Vision: Which parts of the brain are involved?." n. page. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
Freeman gives a biological view of stereoscopic vision. Schild, et al. can use this perspective to further refine their work on the effects of stereoscopic vision compared to monoscopic vision in games for players.
8. Hakkinen, Jukka, Monika Polonen, Jari Takatalo, and Gote Nyman. "Simulator sickness in virtual display gaming: a comparison of stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic situations." MobileHCI '06 Proceedings of the 8th conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services. 227-230. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
Hakkinen, et al. give another perspective on how stereoscopic vision causes sickness. They add in a unique perspective with their use on mobile devices.
9. Bando, Takehiko, Atsuhiko Iijima, and Sumio Yano. "Visual fatigue caused by stereoscopic images and the search for the requirement to prevent them: A review." Displays. 33.2 (2012): 76-83. Web.
Bando, et al. offer some ways to reduce sickness caused by stereoscopic vision. Schild, et al. could try to implement these techniques to see if they improve the players' experiences with stereoscopic 3D games.
10. Xiao, Wu, and Wang Fei. "A study of stereoscopic display technology and visual fatigue caused by viewing stereoscopic images." Computing, Control and Industrial Engineering (CCIE). 1. (2011): 379-282. Web. 5 Sep. 2012.
Xiao and Fei offer a general overview of stereoscopic displays and their possible future.
Evaluation
The authors used both subjective qualitative and objective quantitative evaluation methods to measure their hypotheses. They asked users what they thought about the game play, their presence within the game, and feelings of sickness in the form of questionnaires. The NeuroSky MindSet was used to measure the psychophysiological data of attention and meditation. It is important to note that MindSet has not been proven to be a standard to measure such data.In regards to the questionnaire about game play, there was a higher rating of immersion and flow in stereoscopic vision compared to monoscopic vision. There was less tension and challenge in stereoscopic vision. Between the genders, there was a significant difference of immersion only for males. When it comes to game type, males seemed to have showed the more significant differences than females. For the measure of presence, there was significant difference in the feeling of presence in the game in stereoscopic vision versus monoscopic vision. When comparing the three games between one another, each felt increased presence. Once again, there were varied differences between the genders. Finally, when simulator sickness was analyzed, there was significantly more sickness in stereoscopic vision than in microscopic vision. When measuring the MindSet data, there was actually lower attention in stereoscopic vision for both males and females. When comparing the games to each other, Avatar and Blur showed lower attention, but Trine did to show any significant difference.
Discussion
I think the authors made a sincere effort in this research. However, I also feel that this research had no real direction. They were just providing a large amount of data. The results were not significant enough for me to find novel. The evaluation seemed appropriate except for the MindSet measure for objective data. Because it by admittance has not been validated, I do not feel completely comfortable basing results on this. I would have at least tried to find another objective measurement tool to help reinforce their conclusions. I think this paper is a good step in the right direction, but more work needs to be done before anything conclusive can be said about the effects of stereoscopic vision in video games for players.Reference
Schild, Jonas, Joseph, J. LaViola Jr., and Maic Masuch. "Understanding User Experience in Stereoscopic 3D Games." CHI '12 Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (2012): 89-98. Web. 4 Sep. 2012.
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