ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2025.1655545
This article is part of the Research TopicUnlocking the potential of XR: Shaping a pro-social metaverseView all 5 articles
The Impact of Audience Avatar Movements on Presence in Virtual Live Events
Provisionally accepted
- 1The University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Japan
- 2Ritsumeikan Daigaku, Kyoto, Japan
- 3Kabushiki Kaisha Cyber Agent, Shibuya, Japan
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Virtual live (VL) events enable audiences to participate as avatars in immersive VR environments, yet uniform avatar behaviors often limit emotional engagement and presence. This exploratory study examines how varying proportions of user-controlled versus dummy (scripted) avatars affect the sense of presence during VL performances. We developed a prototype VR stage in Unity and Photon, wherein participants wield virtual glow sticks to synchronize their movements with musical cues while dummy avatars perform unsynchronized motions. Presence was assessed through a combination of validated questionnaires and motion-capture–based analyses of synchronization patterns. Results indicate that higher proportions of synchronized, user-driven avatar movements correspond to stronger subjective presence ratings and more pronounced inter-avatar coupling. Notably, slight timing variations did not diminish perceived presence, suggesting that perfect synchronization is not required for immersive engagement. These findings provide actionable insights for designing interactive digital entertainment platforms, highlighting how controlled variability and optimized user-avatar ratios can enhance audience immersion in future large-scale VL events.
Keywords: virtual reality, User interaction, Synchronization in VR, Immersive presence, emotional engagement
Received: 28 Jun 2025; Accepted: 21 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 GUANG, Sakurai, Matsumura and Okafuji. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: YANG GUANG, yangguang@vogue.is.uec.ac.jp
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