PlaneVR (CHI’19)

Virtual reality (VR) headsets allow wearers to escape their physical surroundings, immersing themselves in a virtual world. Although escape may not be realistic or acceptable in many everyday situations, air travel is one context where early adoption of VR could be very attractive. While travelling, passengers are seated in restricted spaces for long durations, reliant on limited seat-back displays or mobile devices. This paper explores the social acceptability and usability of VR for in-flight entertainment. In an initial survey, we captured respondents’ attitudes towards the social acceptability of VR headsets during air travel. Based on the survey results, we developed a VR in-flight entertainment prototype and evaluated this in a focus group study. Our results discuss methods for improving the acceptability of VR inflight, including using mixed reality to help users transition between virtual and physical environments and supporting interruption from other co-located people.

Related papers:

• J. R. Williamson, M. McGill, and K. Outram, “Planevr: social acceptability of virtual reality for aeroplane passengers,” in Proceedings of the 2019 chi conference on human factors in computing systems, New York, NY, USA, 2019, p. 80:1–80:14.
  [Bibtex]

  @inproceedings{Williamson:2019:PSA:3290605.3300310,
  author = {Williamson, Julie R. and McGill, Mark and Outram, Khari},
  title = {PlaneVR: Social Acceptability of Virtual Reality for Aeroplane Passengers},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  series = {CHI '19},
  year = {2019},
  isbn = {978-1-4503-5970-2},
  location = {Glasgow, Scotland Uk},
  pages = {80:1--80:14},
  articleno = {80},
  numpages = {14},
  url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3290605.3300310},
  doi = {10.1145/3290605.3300310},
  acmid = {3300310},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  keywords = {in-flight entertainment, social acceptability, virtual reality},
  }