The Effect of Photorealism Consistency between the Virtual Hands and Environment on the Sense of Body Ownership and Presence in Virtual Reality
2026-07-27 • Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied how looking at virtual hands in different visual styles affects how much people feel those hands are part of their own body in virtual reality (VR). They found that changing how realistic the hands look or matching the hand style with the virtual environment didn't change this feeling. However, when the virtual environment itself looked more realistic, people felt more 'present' or like they were really there. This suggests that different parts of what makes a virtual body look real can affect VR experiences in different ways.
body ownership illusionvirtual reality (VR)photorealismrendering stylepresencevirtual handsvisual realismanthropomorphismmixed-design experimentsense of presence
Authors
Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi
Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) technology allows users to feel a virtual body as if it was their own (i.e., body ownership illusion). Previous studies have explored how the visual realism of the user's virtual body influences the sense of body ownership in VR, focusing on the aspect of anthropomorphism. However, the effect of photorealism, another element that characterizes the visual realism of a virtual human, has not been systematically examined in the context of body ownership illusion. Therefore, we investigate the effect of the rendering style of virtual hands on the sense of body ownership, hypothesizing that the effect is affected by the rendering style of the virtual environment. In addition, we examine the effect of photorealism on presence (i.e., the sense of being there), as existing studies have offered inconsistent evidence. To this aim, we conducted a 3 x 3 mixed-design remote VR experiment (N=117) that factored in the rendering styles of both the virtual hand and the environment and analyzed the subjective data from the questionnaire. The results suggest that neither the rendering style of virtual hands nor the consistency of the rendering style between the virtual hand and the environment influenced the sense of body ownership. Nevertheless, the more photorealistically the virtual environment was rendered, the stronger the presence. Our results indicate that different dimensions of virtual body realism affect the sense of body ownership differently, thereby highlighting the importance of applying a suitable classification of realism to understand the body ownership illusion for virtual bodies more in depth.