Mutual Proximity Awareness in Immersive Multi-User Virtual Environments with Real Walking

Are users aware of each other in an immersive multi-user virtual environment if they cannot see or hear eachother? We present a study on users´ awareness of other users who share the same physical space. The goal of ourresearch is to investigate proximity awareness when walking in multi-user virtual environments. The high degreeof immersion in our virtual environment is achieved through the use of a head-mounted display and real walking ina large tracked space. In our experiment, pairs of participants are required to walk on pre-defined paths towardsor side by side to each other and point at their test partners if they feel their presence. Our results show that 1/3 ofthe participants who had a-priori knowledge about the possible proximity of their test partners could notice theirtest partners during the experiment at a distance shorter than 1m. The test subjects who did not have any a-prioriknowledge proved to be not aware of other users.