The Influence of a Low-Resolution Peripheral Display Extension on the Perceived Plausibility and Presence

The Field of View (FoV) is a central technical display characteristic of Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), which has been shown to have a notable impact on important aspects of the user experience. For example, an increased FoV has been shown to foster a sense of presence and improve peripheral information processing, but it also increases the risk of VR sickness. This article investigates the impact of a wider but inhomogeneous FoV on the perceived plausibility, measuring its effects on presence, spatial presence, and VR sickness as a comparison to and replication of effects from prior work. We developed a low-resolution peripheral display extension to pragmatically increase the FoV, taking into account the lower peripheral acuity of the human eye. While this design results in inhomogeneous resolutions of HMDs at the display edges, it also is a low complexity and low-cost extension. However, its effects on important VR qualities have to be identified. We conducted two experiments with 30 and 27 participants, respectively. In a randomized 2x3 within-subject design, participants played three rounds of bowling in VR, both with and without the display extension. Two rounds contained incongruencies to induce breaks in plausibility. In experiment 2, we enhanced one incongruency to make it more noticeable and improved the shortcomings of the display extension that had previously been identified. However, neither study measured the low-resolution FoV extension’s effect in terms of perceived plausibility, presence, spatial presence, or VR sickness. We found that one of the incongruencies could cause a break in plausibility without the extension, confirming the results of a previous study.