Mixed Reality Golf Putting: A Comparative Analysis of Golf Putting Performance in Real, Virtual, and Augmented Virtuality Environments

Although immersive technologies hold enormous potential for enhancing sports training, existing systems encounter notable limitations. While fully immersive virtual reality (VR) systems can address constraints of physical training setups such as limited space or equipment, full VR environments often lack rich, realistic, and multisensory feedback often required for effective sports training. To address this gap, this work investigates skill-based sport training, particularly, golf putting, across the reality-virtuality continuum. We implemented a mixed reality (MR) putting simulator that combines real equipment (putter and golf ball) with a virtual training environment. Three training conditions were realized: (i) real-world putting, constrained by limited physical space; (ii) a VR putting, in which a real putter and ball are used but represented virtually within the virtual environment (VE); (iii) an augmented virtuality (AV) putting, which reveals the real putter, ball, and users' limbs through a localized video-passthrough window, aiming to preserve users' sense of embodiment and presence while enabling simulation of an unlimited putting area. We conducted a pilot within-subjects experiment with 36 participants and found that the AV condition improved immediate putting performance, reduced task load, reduced perceived motion sickness, and increased user preference compared to the VR condition, while user's sense of presence remained comparable to VR training. These findings indicate that AV offers a pragmatic "sweet spot" on the virtuality continuum, balancing the tradeoff between sensory fidelity and training flexibility, offering valuable design insights for immersive sports training systems.