# Current Perceptions of Virtual Reality Technology
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Why and How Do People Use VR?
When asked to rank the importance of four different sensory features of VR devices (Figure 8), having accurate head-tracking was rated the most important, closely followed by visual graphics. The features that participants ranked the least important for VR devices were high-quality sound and haptic feedback from controllers. Only 11 out of the 97 who had tried VR before had adjusted their VR device to match the lens separation to their own interpupillary distance, yet 24 reported as having had this distance measured previously. It is important that this is recognised, despite the opportunity to set the image positions to match the observer's distance between their eyes (IPD) in many headsets, due to the problems in the realism and the comfort of the VR \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Prompt** & **V** & \(\mathbf{p}\) & **Direction** \\ \hline Lightweight & 2529.5 & 0.988 & Neutral \\ Easy to use & 5120 & \textless{}0.001 & Positive \\ Bulky & 5810.5 & \textless{}0.001 & Positive \\ Useful & 4927 & \textless{}0.001 & Positive \\ Complicated to set up & 1681 & 0.385 & Neutral \\ Unnecessary & 1165.5 & \textless{}0.001 & Negative \\ Enioyable to use & 7838.5 & \textless{}0.001 & Positive \\ I will own one in the next few years & 2953.5 & 0.574 & Neutral \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Output from the one-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank test on the 5-point Likert style question ‘what are your thoughts on the VR headsets themselves?’. Figure 7: Frequency of the ranked appropriateness of different descriptions of VR devices. experience that can accompany an incorrect IPD [9, 112]. Moreover, of those who reported to needing to wear glasses, only 14.70% wore them while using VR (23.52% reported sometimes wearing them). One free-test question asked in what ways participants thought VR could benefit them personally. Occurring 19 times was the word _'entertain'_; related words such as _'game'_ (_n_ = 10), _'gaming'_ (_n_ = 12), _'fun'_ (_n_ = 17) indicate that the theme of recreation was the most common in the responses to this question. This coincides with the forced choice options from the question shown in Figure 4b, where recreation was the most chosen answer to what VR was being utilised for by current users. The word _'stress'_ appeared five times in the responses to what VR was being used for, in contexts such as _\"take my mind off of daily stressors in real world\"_. Having an immersive environment that causes one to forget about the physical world is a useful tool, not only for reducing stress but also for medical interventions: _\"help with fears and PTSD, maybe even just from escaping this world\"_. As the survey was completed during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was perhaps particularly important that this form of distraction was desired by many individuals. In this context, experiencing places or events was a common answer; one individual elaborated: _\"because of the pandemic I could not come for a campus tour but having that campus tour experience on VR could be the next best thing\"_. This could indeed be used as a great tool in allowing individuals to attend a university that may be hard to reach for an open day, or giving potential customers a taste of a service a business has to offer, to overcome travel or accessibility limits, or even when these are unrestricted. Other themes, less common but appearing numerous times, include using the technology for exercise, training, and research. There are currently software programs being used in these domains, and it is positive that the public acknowledges these as having beneficial uses. On the other hand, using VR as a release from boredom appeared three times. Participants were asked to report their thoughts on the notion that VR may become a daily commodity. Figure 9 displays a sentiment analysis conducted on the free-text responses to this question. Opposing words appear on both sides of the cloud, for example _'useful'_ and _'useless'_, indicating a variety of opinions.