Quality of Experience and virtual reality: an exhaustive literature review
August 29th, 2022
It was in 2011 that Ernest Cline first described the OASIS – a globally networked virtual reality most of humanity used daily, and in 2018 Spielberg brought it to life on the big screen only for people to wonder what if. What if we could live our lives in a virtual world? Fast forward to the end of 2021 and we have Mark Zuckerberg presenting us with an answer to that what-if question. The solution – the Metaverse. Nowadays we can pretty much undeniably claim that VR is here to stay. What is more, it is here to gradually invade our everyday lives. From safety training at factories to mindfulness sessions in the comfort of your own home or, if you are in the mood to mingle, socializing at a VR concert.
But one question remains – How is our experience in VR formed? In an attempt to unravel the intricacies of the user’s VR experience we went through 729 academic and non-academic articles to create a quality of experience (QoE) model that consists of 252 factors grouped in four main categories. You can find the full list of factors and their descriptions HERE:
Context factors
These are factors that most often relate to the situational properties of the physical environment in which the user is (e.g., size, layout, location, temperature, etc.). Another important sub-branch here is safety, which was shown to encompass different dimensions – physical, psychological, ethical, and data. The purpose for use, cost (process, relationships and economic) and accessibility were also part of the most frequently mentioned context factors.
System factors
Factors in this branch are related mostly to 1) hardware components (e.g., HMD resolution, haptic devices, HMD FoV, tracking devices); 2) software developments (e.g., image rendering algorithms, tracking algorithms); and 3) network characteristics (e.g., latency, bandwidth, bit rate, delay).
Content factors
This branch of factors has the most to do with storytelling in VR. How do we guide the user’s intention in VR without overbearing them with cues? How do we use the soundscape to increase the user’s immersion in the story? How do we design intereactions in the virtual environment?
User factors
Understandably, these were the most frequently mentioned factors in academic articles. This is because everything we explore, we do to understand how it affects the user. In this branch, notably, we had more static factors that are related to the user’s characteristics (e.g., age, previous, experience, physical health, etc.) and more dynamic ones such as presence, cybersickness, immersion, enjoyment, etc.