Technological Advances in Two Generations of Consumer-Grade VR Systems: Effects on User Experience and Task Performance

Integrated VR (IVR) systems consist of a head-mounted display (HMD) and body-tracking capabilities. They enable users to translate their physical movements into corresponding avatar movements in real-time, allowing them to perceive their avatars via the displays. Consumer-grade IVR systems have been available for 10 years, significantly fostering VR research worldwide. However, the effects of even apparently significant technological advances of IVR systems on user experience and the overall validity of prior embodiment research using such systems often remain unclear. We ran a user-centered study comparing two comparable IVR generations: a nearly 10-year-old hardware (HTC Vive, 6-point tracking) and a modern counterpart (HTC Vive Pro 2, 6-point tracking). To ensure ecological validity, we evaluated the systems in their commercially available, as-is configurations. In a 2x5 mixed design, participants completed five tasks covering different use cases on either the old or new system. We assessed presence, sense of embodiment, appearance and behavior plausibility, workload, task performance, and gathered qualitative feedback. Results showed no significant system differences, with only small effect sizes. Bayesian analysis further supported the null hypothesis, suggesting that the investigated generational hardware improvements offer limited benefits for user experience and task performance. For the 10-year generational step examined here, excluding potential technological progress in the necessary software components, this supports the validity of conclusions from prior work and underscores the applicability of older configurations for research in embodied VR.