Quantifying the Effect of Thermal Illusions in Virtual Reality

2025-09-01

AI Summary

Virtual and extended reality (XR) systems struggle to authentically simulate thermal sensation; while hardware-based thermal displays offer accuracy, they are bulky, power-intensive, and impede mobility. Method: This study investigates thermal illusions—leveraging audiovisual cross-modal cues to elicit thermal perception without physical temperature change—via a two-stage psychophysical experiment systematically quantifying the compensatory capacity of diverse visual and auditory cues, both individually and in combination, on perceived temperature. Contribution/Results: Thermal illusions significantly modulate subjective thermal ratings but exert only minimal influence on objective temperature perception (±0.5°C), revealing a pronounced dissociation between subjective and objective responses. Auditory cues were found to effectively augment visual cues, enhancing illusion stability. This work empirically characterizes the perceptual limits of thermal illusions, providing critical evidence and methodological guidance for designing thermally immersive VR experiences.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web data

Abstract

Thermal sensations are central to how we experience the world, yet most virtual and extended reality systems fail to simulate them effectively. While hardware-based thermal displays can provide accurate temperature changes, they are often bulky, power-intensive, and restrict user mobility. Consequently, recent works have explored thermal illusions, perceptual effects that rely on cross-modal interactions, to achieve thermal experiences without physical heating or cooling. While thermal illusions have been shown to consistently alter subjective ratings, the actual extent of their effect on the perceived temperature of interacted objects remains unexplored. To address this, we contribute the findings of two user studies following psychophysical procedures. We first ordered and scaled the effects of a variety of visual and auditory cues (N=20) and subsequently quantified their isolated and combined efficacy in offsetting physical temperature changes (N=24). We found that thermal illusions elicited robust changes in subjective judgments, and auditory cues showed potential as an alternative or complementary approach to established visual techniques. However, the actual effects induced by thermal illusions were relatively small (+-0.5°C) and did not consistently align with abstract ratings, suggesting a need to reconsider how future thermal illusions or experiences are designed and evaluated.

Problem

• Quantifying thermal illusions' effect on perceived temperature in VR
• Exploring cross-modal cues to simulate thermal sensations without hardware
• Assessing efficacy of visual and auditory cues in offsetting temperature changes

Innovation

• Using thermal illusions for VR temperature simulation
• Combining visual and auditory cues to offset temperature changes
• Quantifying perceptual effects through psychophysical user studies