Tags: university , bath , bath uni , uni of bath
'If you’ve ever played an immersive game using virtual reality (VR) technology, you’ll be familiar with the concept of customising an avatar to represent you. Most people design an aspirational, buffed-up version of themselves, but new research from the University of Bath suggests you should temper your vanity when the game is for fitness, as your performance improves when they compete against an avatar that more closely matches your authentic self. “Idealised avatars increase wishful identification but seem to impact physical performance negatively,” said Dr Christof Lutteroth, who led the research from the University’s Department of Computer Science. The Bath study explores the effects of two types of customisation (idealised and realistic) in an immersive bike racing exergame. The findings are presented in a paper that has received a prestigious Best Paper Award from the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, due to take place in Hawaii next month. For the study, racers wearing VR headsets self-competed against both a generic avatar and an avatar that represented them more accurately. They performed better against their realistic avatar and found the game more motivating. Next, racers self-competed against their realistic versus an idealised avatar. Though they had fun playing against their pumped-up selves, they performed better against their realistic avatar, as measured through power output.'
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