Important Update For Participants. The study has finished (Aug 31). All gift cards have been sent out on Sep 1, and you should have received yours. If you didn’t, please let us know. The performance reports were sent on Sep 22. Again, if you didn’t get it, let us know.

Thank you for your interest in our study. We are a group of researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada, trying to understand how humans perceive size and depth in Virtual Reality. We need your help to run a study for this task. In order to participate, you need to have access to any six–degree of freedom VR device compatible with Windows (such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index, or Windows Mixed Reality devices) or an Oculus Quest.

Alright, what do I have to do?

Running the study is extremely simple and quick! We expect that it will take around 15 to 20 minutes for the whole process. Here’s how you can participate:

  1. Go to https://forms.gle/kwzdXaeA1Zb3UQSn8. All the other steps are accessed through this form.
  2. Watch a short (2min 30sec) instructions video to understand the tasks.
  3. Download a lightweight application to your Windows computer or Oculus Quest.
  4. [For Oculus Quest users only.] You can either use your Quest in Link mode as a standard Windows device (recommended), or you need to enable developer mode on it.
  5. Run the study. It should take about 15 minutes. Please make sure that you’re connected to the internet while running the study.
  6. Finish the short (actually short, we promise) survey in the form in (1).

That’s cool and all, but what’s in it for me?

Glad you asked. Here’s a list of benefits.

  1. You get to test your size and depth perception ability in VR! A score given at the end of the study tells you how well you did.
  2. You get a US $5 amazon.com (or equivalent, based on your preference) gift card.
  3. We are keeping a leaderboard over here. If you get a high score and are among the top ten at the end of the study, we will send you an additional gift card worth US $15.
  4. After the study concludes (September, see Important Dates below), we will send you a detailed report of your performance. So you can know exactly how you performed at each task!
  5. You get our immense gratitude and the satisfaction of having helped science.

Is that all?

Almost. If you really like the study, or really want that top ten spot, you can repeat the experiment up to 2 more times. That is, you can do up to 3 sessions.

Only the best score counts, so each repetition gives you a chance to improve your score. But that’s not all! The second and third session will also give you 100 bonus points each.

So, you score is computed is:

Session Score for session Total score
1 S1 S1
2 S2 max(S1, S2) + 100
3 S3 max(S1, S2, S3) + 200

Please note that you don’t need to fill the form more than once. You just need to restart the application and run through the experiment again.

Important Dates

Date Event
2020-08-31 Study finishes
2020-09-10 Gift cards sent out
2020-09-25 Detailed performance reports sent out

I have a question, who do I ask?

Please look at the FAQ below. If it doesn’t answer your question, feel free to email us, or visit our webpages to know more about our research.

Name Email Webpage
Karan Singh (Principal Investigator) karan@dgp.toronto.edu http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~karan/
Rahul Arora (Contact Author) arorar@dgp.toronto.edu https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~arorar/
Jiannan Li (Contact Author) jiannanli@dgp.toronto.edu http://jchrisli.github.io/
Gongyi Shi gongyi.shi@mail.utoronto.ca https://ca.linkedin.com/in/gongyi-shi

Frequently-asked questions

 
Q: [For existing participants] I received an email from Rahul Arora asking for additional information. Is that email legit? Do I need to respond in order to get my compensation?
A: Yes, we sent an email with a request for additional information. It is a request and you’re not required to respond in order to receive your gift card, as per the original consent form you signed. However, we’ll really appreciate if you respond, as it can improve our analysis.
Q: I completed all the steps but didn’t receive the detailed report or the US $5 gift card.
A: We will send the detailed report as well as the gift cards when the study concludes in early September. See Important Dates above.
Q: I finished the study but my name is not on the leaderboard yet.
A: You need to finish all the steps (including the form) and use the exact username given to you by the application. If you filled the form but think that you may have a typo in the username, please email us with your email address (that you used in the form), whatever part of the username you recall, and the approximate time of study completion and/or form submission.
Q: No, pretty sure I filled the form as well, and used the correct username. I’m still not on the leaderboard.
A: The leaderboard is updated every 15 minutes or so. Please check back in a few minutes. If it still doesn’t show your name, shoot us an email. Please include all relevant information (see the previous answer).
Q: The app crashed on my device. Can you help?
A: We’re sorry about that. If you’re using a Windows device and don’t mind sending us a log file, we’ll be happy to take a look. You can find the log file at C:\Users\<your_username>\AppData\LocalLow\DGP\VR Perception Study\Player.log. Unfortunately, we currently don’t have a way to debug issues with Oculus Quest (in Android mode). Also, we are unable to recover your data or scores from a partial session.
Q: If I do 2 (or 3) study sessions, do I automatically get $10 (or $15)?
A: No. The second and third sessions are meant to help you increase your score and boost your chances of getting to the top ten on the leaderboard.
Q: Will the leaderboard display my personal information?
A: No. The leaderboard only shows the randomly generated username assigned to you by the application.