User Experience and Immersion of Interactive Omnidirectional Videos in CAVE Systems and Head-Mounted Displays

Omnidirectional video (ODV) is a medium that offers the viewer a 360-degree panoramic video view of the recorded setting. In recent years, various novel platforms for presenting such content have emerged. Many of these applications aim to offer an immersive and interactive experience for the user, but there has been little research on how immersive these solutions actually are. For this study, two interactive ODV (iODV) applications were evaluated: a CAVE system and a head-mounted display (HMD) application. We compared the users’ expectations and experience and the level of immersion between these systems. Both indoor and outdoor recorded environments were included. First, the results indicate that the user’s experiences with these applications exceed their expectations greatly. Second, the HMD application was found to be more immersive than the CAVE system. Based on the findings of this study, both systems seem to have a great potential for presenting ODV content, thus offering the user an immersive experience for both indoor and outdoor content.