Breaking the Tracking: Enabling Weight Perception using Perceivable Tracking Offsets

Virtual reality (VR) technology strives to enable a highly immersive experience for the user by including a wide variety of modalities (e.g. visuals, haptics). Current VR hardware however lacks a sufficient way of communicating the perception of weight of an object, resulting in scenarios where users can not distinguish between lifting a bowling ball or a feather. We propose a solely software based approach of simulating weight in VR by deliberately using perceivable tracking offsets. These tracking offsets nudge users to lift their arm higher and result in a visual and haptic perception of weight. We conducted two user studies showing that participants intuitively associated them with the sensation of weight and accept them as part of the virtual world. We further show that compared to no weight simulation, our approach led to significantly higher levels of presence, immersion and enjoyment. Finally, we report perceptional thresholds and offset boundaries as design guidelines for practitioners.