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May I Remain Seated: A Pilot Study on the Impact of Reducing Room-Scale Trainings to Seated Conditions for Long Procedural Virtual Reality Trainings

Although modern consumer level head-mounted-displays of today provide high-quality room scale tracking, and thus support a high level of immersion and presence, there are application contexts in which constraining oneself to seated set-ups is necessary. Classroom sized training groups are one highly relevant example. However, what is lost when constraining cybernauts to a stationary seated physical space? What is the impact on immersion, presence, cybersickness and what implications does this have on training success? Can a careful design for seated virtual reality (VR) amend some of these aspects? In this line of research, the study provides data on a comparison between standing and seated long (50–60 min) procedural VR training sessions of chemical operators in a realistic and lengthy chemical procedure (combination of digital and physical actions) inside a large 3-floor virtual chemical plant. Besides, a VR training framework based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs (MHN) is also proposed to systematically analyze the needs in VR environments. In the first of a series of studies, the physiological and safety needs of MHN are evaluated among seated and standing groups in the form of cybersickness, usability and user experience. The results (n=32, real personnel of a chemical plant) show no statistically significant differences among seated and standing groups. There were low levels of cybersickness along with good scores of usability and user experience for both conditions. From these results, it can be implied that the seated condition does not impose significant problems that might hinder its application in classroom training. A follow-up study with a larger sample will provide a more detailed analysis on differences in experienced presence and learning success.