Magnification Illusion in Virtual Reality Environment

The magnification illusion occurs when the perspective angle appears different from what is expected when viewing two parallel lines receding into the distance through the telescope. This illusion has been observed in real-world experiments. This study aims to investigate the potential of Virtual Reality (VR) to replicate the magnification illusion observed in real-world settings. To achieve the magnification effect in virtual reality, the field of view needs to be manipulated. However, the VR hardware implementation toolkit always resets the field of view to a certain value to prevent users from experiencing VR sickness, which causes a challenge in the implementation of the magnification effect. In this work, we have proposed a solution by creating a virtual fronto-parallel plane and a camera to simulate a magnification effect in the VR rendering that mimics real-world projection. However, the preliminary experiment results indicate that the magnification illusion is absent in VR, unlike in real-world conditions. Furthermore, the optical slant angle was more underestimated when magnified in VR than in real-world conditions. The difficulty in accurately replicating the magnification effect within VR poses a notable challenge for future research in this domain.