Effect of Latency on Presence in Stressful Virtual Environments

Previous research has shown that even low end-to-endlatency can have adverse effects on performance invirtual environments (VE). This paper reports on anexperiment investigating the effect of latency on othermetrics of VE effectiveness: physiological response,simulator sickness, and self-reported sense of presence.The VE used in the study includes two rooms: the first isnormal and non-threatening; the second is designed toevoke a fear/stress response. Participants were assignedto either a low latency (~50 ms) or high latency (~90 ms)group. Participants in the low latency condition had ahigher self-reported sense of presence and a statisticallyhigher change in heart rate between the two rooms thandid those in the high latency condition. There were nosignificant relationships between latency and simulatorsickness