Balancing Accuracy and Embodiment: A Hybrid Perspective for Complex Visuomotor Tasks in VR

Visual perspective is a crucial design factor in Virtual Reality (VR). Especially when complex motor tasks are involved, it can affect both objective performance and subjective experience. We compared four visual perspectives (First-Person view, translucent Ghost view, Third-Person view, and Hybrid view) in a user study (N=20) involving different difficulties in a balancing game. Our findings reveal complex tradeoffs between the sense of embodiment, performance, and preference: The preferred Hybrid perspective offered a significant stability advantage for low task difficulty. However, this benefit vanished with increasing physical demand, revealing a speed-accuracy trade-off where external views required longer completion times. Ego-centric perspectives (First and Ghost) induced a stronger sense of embodiment and presence, but were less preferred. Participants’ choice was not determined by representational fidelity but by pragmatic considerations of perceived utility. As perceived effectiveness can overrule objective performance and subjective experience, the choice of perspective is an important factor for future training and rehabilitation applications in VR.