DRONE RACING SPECTATING: THE EFFECTS OF SPECTATING MODES ON AUDIENCE IMMERSION AND PRESENCE
pp.710-711
Today, hundreds of millions of people spectate eSports. eSports fans are spending their time watching live internet broadcasts, referred to as streams, on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. With the high levels of interaction and the live-broadcasting nature, eSports streaming consumption lead to a significant effect on eSports industry (Sjöblom & Hamari, 2017). As a result, eSport has been growing definitely as a viable spectator sport (Bornemark, 2013). In the line with it, drone racing is gaining popularity as a sport type where players control drones, typically radio-controlled aircrafts equipped with cameras, by wearing head-mounted displays (HMD) showing the live stream camera feed of first person view point from the drones. Recently, drone racing has been recognized as a new type of eSports since it involves digital communication technology, specifically virtual reality (VR) technology, and cutting edge computing and control engineering to produce aircrafts that are capable of speeds in excess of 150 Kilometer per hour and acceleration as fast as F1 cars. In essence, drone racing combines VR gaming with real world action to create a new genre, Mixed Reality Sports. The uniqueness of drone racing comes from the first person perspective. Due to first person view display glasses, pilots immerse into their drones; they experience the feeling of sitting on the nose of the drone. Furthermore, the immersive experience can be shared with the spectators through the first person view video that the pilots see. Drone racing provides its spectators this type of unique immersive experience, but the problem is that spectators of first person view drone racing can easily get motion sickness/VR sickness. Moreover, spectators can easily miss out on what is happening and thus need some structure to the experience (Hemb, 2017). A proper system is needed to provide unprecedented immersive experiences to them and VR technology can provide more optimal views for spectating drone race. However, there are only a few studies on what drone racing spectators want to see and how they enjoy VR content of drone racing. Therefore, the goal of this study is to assess and evaluate drone racing spectating. A series of spectating modes (mirroring, 3D and VR) is assessed in a series of experiments and user testing sessions to determine the preferred mode for spectating drone racing VR content and analyze the relationships between spectating modes and level of audience immersion and presence.