How Will Different Control/Display Ratios Influence Muscle Fatigue and Game Experience in Virtual Reality Games?

Abstract: The dramatic evolvement of Virtual Reality (VR) technique in recent years has enabled a rapid growth of VR games. In order to provide intuitive interaction with a virtual world, VR hand controllers were developed. Since this kind of controller is based on hand movement, the risk of getting fatigued becomes very high. However, little current research has addressed the impact of fatigue generated by VR hand controllers. In this study, the influence of different Control/Display (C/D) ratios of hand controllers on muscle fatigue and the game experience in VR games was explored. Based on an established mobile VR fishing game, a test scenario was developed which uses Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch hand controller. A user study was conducted with 24 participants. The between subjects design was applied which spans three groups experiencing fishing with different C/D ratios (1.0, 0.5, 0.1 respectively). During the test, self- perceived fatigue data as well as game experience data was collected. The results showed that the fatigue was reduced gradually along with the decreasing of the C/D ratio, while different C/D ratios produced an impact on game experience depending on the margin between the exact ratio and 1.0. Based on the results, some implications for the design of VR games were introduced.