Prospecting Avatar Capacity to convey urban Ambiance Perception – PACAP

This project targets the use of Virtual Reality (VR) to immerse users in virtual urban spaces and convey specific urban ambiances that result from the perception of the morphology and physical characteristics of the city (lights, sounds, materials, scales, volumes, etc.). The study of urban ambiance perception allows to anticipate physical reality and to interpret future environments in a subjective approach, which is a major help for urban designers when trying to understand the relationship between humans and the environment in urban projects. Yet, current virtual urban spaces often fail at providing users with a realistic ambiance and space perception, as they are often still images or models without “real” life. The overall objective of this project is therefore to bring “life” in virtual urban spaces to improve urban ambiance perception. While many factors can influence urban ambiance perception (e.g., shadows, sun location, and light effects), we focus specifically on studying whether it can be influenced by the use of avatars to represent users in the Virtual Environment (VE), as well as the integration of virtual agents or users in the VE. Urban spaces being most likely populated by inhabitants, representing multiple users with avatars or involving agents in the virtual urban space seems crucial to convey realistic ambiances and provide users with convincing urban space immersions. We believe it is one of the biggest strengths of VR applied to this area, and it has so far not been explored. We will thus explore the capacity of avatar embodiment to convey urban ambiance perception. To that aim, we propose three innovative research axes: RA1) Explore methods to elicit a sense of embodiment towards avatars in virtual urban spaces. RA2) Evaluate how modulating avatars representation can elicit the perception of specific urban ambiances. RA3) Explore the impact of other virtual avatars or little groups of agents on the perception of urban ambiance.