A Comparison of Seated and Room-Scale Virtual Reality in a Serious Game for Epidural Preparation

A room-scale virtual reality (VR) configuration allows users to physically walk within an interactive area while reflecting their real-world motion in the virtual environment. Room-scale VR provides developers of serious games and virtual simulations the opportunity to develop more realistic applications that are highly interactive and engaging. Despite these benefits, room-scale VR hardware is generally more expensive due to motion tracking and headset costs, also requiring a potentially large open physical space for the player to walk around in. Here we provide a quantitative and qualitative comparison between the usability, performance, and engagement of traditional seated VR with a room-scale variation within the scope of a medical-based epidural preparation serious game. This is a first-step in examining the differences between the two configurations and determining whether the additional requirements and resources associated with a room-scale VR configuration are warranted. Although our quantitative results reveal limited differences, the room scale VR configuration led to higher immersion. Our qualitative results indicate that the hardware being used and the requirements imposed upon it by the desired fidelity of the simulation must be carefully considered; higher fidelity implies greater computational requirements that may not be readily available to the average computer user.