Affective Virtual Reality System (AVRS): Design and Ratings of Affective VR Scenes

The present affective stimulation systems have shortages in terms of inefficient emotion evocation and poor immersion. This paper presents the design, instructions and ratings of a novel Affective Virtual Reality System (AVRS), which includes a large set of emotionally-evocative VR scenes and their affective ratings. It can provide more objective and direct affective stimuli of basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, relaxation, disgust, and rage) by shielding the environmental interferences. In this study, affective VR scenes have been designed by using various standard affective picture, video and audio materials as references. To assess the three dimensional emotion indices of valence, arousal and dominance, each scene of the system is rated and standardized by Self-Assessment Mainikin. AVRS is the first released VR version affect stimuli materials, which sets a precedent for future interdisciplinary work bridging the gap between VR and cognitive psychology.