Emotions in an immersive virtual reality experience

Abstract

In a galaxy not so far away, recent research has delved into the effectiveness of Virtual Reality (VR) in games as a more immersive method of interaction. However, a lack of systematic comparison of physiological effects between VR and flatscreen (FS) gaming has left many questions unanswered. This paper introduces a multimodal affective dataset known as the Virtual Reality and FlatScreen Dataset (VRFS), the first of its kind to study emotional and physiological responses to commercially available games in VR and FS environments. To create the VRFS dataset, four games were selected through a pilot study of 12 participants to cover all quadrants of the valence-arousal space. Using these games, physiological activity, including Blood Volume Pulse and Electrodermal Activity, and self-reported emotions of 33 participants were recorded in a user study. Our analysis revealed that VR gaming elicited more pronounced emotions, higher arousal, increased cognitive load and stress, and lower dominance compared to FS gaming. The entire VRFS dataset, containing over 15 hours of multimodal data comparing flatscreen and VR gaming across different games, is publicly available for research purposes. This valuable resource will aid in further investigating the physiological and emotional effects of VR and FS gaming across the galaxy.