Measuring Surroundings Awareness using Different Visual Parameters in Virtual Reality

Due to the popularity of digital games, there is a growing interest in using games as therapeutic interventions. The ability of games to capture attention can be beneficial to distract patients from pain. In this paper, we investigate the impact of visual parameters (color, shapes, and animation) on users’ awareness of their surroundings in virtual reality. We conducted a user study in which experiments included a visual search task using a virtual reality game. Through the game, the participants were asked to find a target among distraction objects. The results showed that the different visual representations of the target among distraction objects could affect the users’ awareness of their surroundings. The least awareness of the surroundings occurred when the target and distractors shared similar features. Further, the conjunction of low similarity between distractors-distractors and high similarity between target-distractors provided less awareness of the surroundings. Additionally, results revealed that there is a strong positive correlation between search time and awareness of the surroundings. Less awareness of the surroundings while playing a game implies that users are positively engaged in that game. These results offered a set of criteria that can be applied to future virtual reality interventions for medical pain distraction.