Emotional effect of cinematic VR compared with traditional 2D film

Virtual reality (VR) has been increasingly applied in filmmaking in recent years. The integration of film and VR is becoming an important breakthrough for traditional films. This new types of film, named cinematic virtual reality (CVR), provides immersive VR experience where individual users can immerse themselves in synthetic world experience in 360° (Mateer, 2017).However, the characteristics and influence of this new digital media on human emotion is far from clear. In this study, we conducted an experiment to investigate the different emotional effects of CVR by comparing with a traditional two-dimensional (2D) film from two critical aspects: subjective emotional experience and real-time objective physiological reaction. Our results first revealed that the subjective experience and the physiological reaction showed significantly stronger emotional effect in the CVR condition than in the 2D condition. Upon further observation, we found that four emotions (excitement, nervousness, hostility, and jitteriness) are more closely correlated with the CVR than with the traditional 2D film. Real-time analysis of skin temperature shows a faster and steadier decline in the CVR group than in the 2D group. Finally, we summarized the causality of the effect by analyzing the characteristics of CVR. Our study suggests that CVR is an effective medium that induces stronger emotional experience and physiological reaction than traditional 2D film can. The design of the VR environment in CVR, as a key feature in the narrative of a film story, has an important influence on the emotional processing of the audience.