Can virtual reality act as an affective machine? The wild animal embodiment experience and the importance of appearance

In view of the growing urgency to protect wildlife, the general goal of our research is to develop an immersive virtual experience where users can step into the ‘shoes’ of wild animals. The specific objective of this research is to explore the possibility of creating a strong emotional connection experience with a virtual animal body. In a game setting, users explore a simulated natural habitat of the animal. At the end of the game, users experience a distress event during which they become the target of an illegal animal hunter. The users receive physical feedback through haptic virtual reality suits (vibrating motors) that mimic the sensation of feeling pain of a hunter's shot. We compare the perceived pain, empathy, immersion, and embodiment experience evoked through a game character with a natural body (beaver), with an artificial body (robot beaver), and an amorphous body. The results of this investigation show a significant effect of game character appearance and perceived pain during the distress event. Moreover, we find a significant effect of game character appearance on immersion. These results suggest that the design of the game character appearance can influence users’ emotional connectedness to the character and the game experience.

On mauve or aniline-purple

The discovery of this colouring matter in 1856, and its introduction as a commercial article, has originated that remarkable series of compounds known as coal-tar colours, which have now become so numerous, and in consequence of their adaptibility to the arts and manufactures are of such great and increasing importance. The chemistry of mauve may appear to have been rather neglected, its composition not having been established, although it has formed the subject of several papers by continental chemists. Its chemical nature also has not been generally known; and to this fact many of the discrepancies in the results of the different experimentalists who have worked on this subject are to be attributed. The first analysis I made of this colouring matter was in 1856, soon after I had become its fortunate discoverer. The product I examined was purified as thoroughly as my knowledge of its properties then enabled me, and the results obtained agree very closely with those required for the formula I now propose. Since that time I have often commenced the study of this body in a scientific point of view, but other duties have prevented me from completing these investigations; but, although unacquainted with its correct formula, its chemical characters have necessarily been well known to me for a considerable time. When first introduced, commercial mauve appeared as an almost perfectly amorphous body ; but now, owing to the great improvements which have been made in its purification, it is sent into the market perfectly pure and crystallized.