Effect of movement constraint within virtual environments

One of the difficulties faced by occupational therapists in physical rehabilitation intervention is the limited opportunity for implementing purposeful activities within traditional clinical settings. Virtual reality provides a medium suited to the achievement of the primary needs of rehabilitation intervention -- therapy that can be provided within a functional, purposeful, meaningful and motivating context in a reliable manner that can be readily graded and documented. The purpose of this study was to compare the sense of presence, perceived exertion and performance, experienced by healthy users when they engaged in two virtual environments performed within two video capture virtual applications that differed in their level of structure and the possibility to perform unconstrained movements. The participants in this study included 30 healthy participants. The study instruments included the VividGroup GX and the IREX virtual reality (VR) applications, a demographic questionnaire, a Scenario Feedback Questionnaire, a Presence Questionnaire and the Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion Scale. The responses of the participants showed their enjoyment and high levels of presence in both VR applications, with no significant differences between them. The results of this study showed the potential of using both structured and non-structured VR applications to provide of using both structured and non-structured VR applications to provide users with a satisfactory level of sense of presence and enjoyment