The effect of multi-sensory cues on performance and experience during walking in immersive virtual environments

To examine the effects of multi-sensory cues during non-fatiguing walking in immersive virtual environments, we selected sensory cues including movement wind, directional wind, footstep vibration, and footstep sounds, and investigated their influence and interaction with each other. We developed a virtual reality system with non-fatiguing walking interaction and low-latency, multi-sensory feedback, and used it to conduct two successive experiments measuring user experience and performance through a triangle-completion task. We noticed some positive effects due to the addition of footstep vibration on task performance, and saw significant improvement in reported user experience due to the added wind and vibration cues.