Planet Anima: a virtual graduation experience in the metaverse

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we present Planet Anima, a virtual environment designed for hosting virtual graduation events in the metaverse. Through this digital space, we successfully organized an online event under the COVID-19 circumstance, including a graduation ceremony and a student art exhibition. Our user study analyzes the Planet Anima experience with a focus on collaborative engagement and creative expression. Furthermore, we explore the impact of platform choice (headset VR vs. desktop VR) on metaverse user experience. Our findings demonstrate that Planet Anima can facilitate the co-experiences that foster creativity. Notably, the results indicate that headset VR outperforms desktop VR in terms of presence, social presence, and emotional involvement. This study also highlights the gaps between virtual and physical experiences, identifying the challenge of cybersickness associated with headset VR. These insights contribute to enhancing the user experience within the metaverse.

KEYWORDS:

• Metaverse
• virtual reality
• virtual events
• social presence
• user experience

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank all the people participated in the user study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://bit.ly/3PpfEmg.

2 https://bit.ly/3I7zfEu.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFF0902305), the Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities in China (CUC230B051).

Notes on contributors

Zihan Gao

Zihan Gao is a postdoctoral researcher at School of Animation and Digital Arts, Communication University of China. He has worked on various projects including interactive installations and video games in China and Canada for the last 10 years. His research interests focus on digital media arts, virtual reality, and human–computer interaction.

Xin Lyu

Xin Lyu is a professor at School of Animation and Digital Arts, Communication University of China. He is a distinguished expert of the Internet Society of China, and the deputy director of Beijing Key Laboratory of Digital Animation Technology. His research interests focus on Internet product design and network communications.