Am I in the theater? Usability study of live performance based virtual reality

Duplicating the audience experience of an art performance with VR technology is a promising VR application, which is considered to provide better viewer experience than the conventional video. As various forms of art performances are recorded by the panoramic camera and broadcasted on the Internet, the impact of this new VR-based media to the viewers needs to be systematically studied. In this work, a two-level usability framework is proposed, which combines the traditional concepts of presence and the quality evaluation of art performances, aiming to systematically study the usability of such VR application. Both the conventional video and the panoramic video of a theatre performance were captured simultaneously, and were replayed to two groups of viewers in a cinematic setup and through an HMD respectively. The psychological measurement methods, including the questionnaire and the interview, as well as the psychophysical measurement methods, including the EEG and the motion capture techniques were both used in the study. The results show that the such VR application duplicates the live performance better by providing a higher sense of presence, higher engagement levels, and stronger desire to see live performance. For visual intensive performance contents, the new VR-based media can provide a better user experience. The future development of the new media forms based on the panoramic video technique could benefit from this work.