While promising, the use of Virtual Reality to immerse users in urban spaces often fails at providing users with 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” to virtual urban spaces to improve urban ambiance perception.
For the first time, we tackle this issue from the standpoint of avatar embodiment and its capacity to convey urban ambiance perception with an interdisciplinary approach.
We will explore methods to achieve strong avatar embodiment in large urban virtual environments, evaluate how modulating avatars’ appearance can elicit the perception of specific urban ambiances and study the impact of other virtual avatars or little groups of agents on the perception of urban ambiance.
The expected outcome of this project is a breakthrough in the creation of urban VEs where avatars and agents contribute to the elicitation of urban ambiance.
