Impact of Full-Body Haptic Feedback on the Sense of Presence, Affective Experience, and Game Engagement in a VR Game

This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2025 by researchers at Abertay University, proposes an experimental user study examining whether full-body haptic feedback delivered through a Teslasuit enhances sense of presence, affective experience, and game engagement in a virtual reality game. The authors motivate the work by noting that haptics have historically received less research attention than visual and audio modalities in VR, and that prior studies have mostly relied on focused devices such as controllers, gloves, and vests rather than whole-body systems. The stated aim is to address this gap using the narrative-driven VR title You Are Being Followed, chosen for its emphasis on psychological tension and atmospheric sensory design.

The proposed methodology is a within-subject design with approximately 50 participants, comparing a haptic condition against a control condition without haptics. Sense of presence would be assessed through an embedded pictorial questionnaire and the Igroup Presence Questionnaire, affect through the Self-Assessment Manikin alongside heart rate, heart rate variability, and eye-tracking metrics, and game engagement through the Game Engagement Questionnaire together with post-experiment interviews. The haptic experiences were designed to emulate heartbeats tied to the character's emotional state and environmental stimuli such as wind, rain, and terrain changes. Three hypotheses are framed against a null hypothesis: that haptics increase presence, enhance affective experience, and improve game engagement, with analysis planned through t-tests, ANOVA, and thematic analysis.

As an extended abstract, the document reports no empirical results, and its data access statement confirms that no new data were generated or analysed. Its contribution is therefore a research design and set of expected outcomes rather than findings. The authors anticipate that results will offer developers practical guidance for immersive VR design and suggest that alternative sensory channels could improve accessibility for players with visual or auditory impairments. The work was funded by the CoSTAR National Lab and the InGAME Creative Cluster.