# Exploring the Impact of Virtual Reality on Painting Appreciation
## Materials and Methods
### Experimental Design  
#### 2.3.1 Independent Variables  
An experiment was designed to study the impact of the painting presentation method. For the evaluation of the experience of painting appreciation, a one-factor, four-level factorial design was employed. The independent variable was the painting presentation method, including the original physical painting, physical painting album, desktop VR, and HTC Vive. Further details are provided in the following sections. 1. Physical Original Painting  
The experimental site was 7 \(\times\) 4.8 m; the 12 original paintings were hung on the walls in a sequence, and the other two walls were equipped with auxiliary visual hanging scrolls, as illustrated in Figure 2.  
Figure 1: The twelve original paintings in this study: (**1**) Crystal sky is full of clouds; (**2**) With the running clouds, the seemingly stacked coutages, the scenery reaches the borderless; (**3**) Moonlight burst from the clouds dancing with the shadows of the flowers; (**4**) The clouds hold the eternal empty skies; (**5**) The wind blew and rolled up the clouds, filling the sky; (**6**) The clouds and the sun reflect each other in the boundless glory; (**7**) Adorable clouds and spring birds are gone away; (**8**) Endless mountains were linked with lifting clouds; (**9**) A fair lady is stepping down from the clouds in spring; (**10**) Deep in the clouded mountains was a hamlet; (**11**) I set out with a farewell to Bai-Di Town glittered with morning clouds; (**12**) The wide river was dappled with lowing clouds, where an old friend of mine is returning. Figure 2: Exhibition of the physical original works. The photo on top is the decoration of auxiliary visual hanging scrolls (the title on the hanging scroll is “the beauty of cloud”), and the photo on bottom is a 360\({}^{\circ}\) panoramic scene. Physical Painting Album  
The paintings were scanned to create an album with an unfolded size of 60 \(\times\) 30 cm. Each painting was presented as a panorama and partially enlarged, and its name and description were displayed in the lower-right or lower-left corner of the panorama. Figure 3 shows a panoramic view of Painting 6 in the painting album. 3. Desktop VR  
The desktop VR scenario is illustrated in Figure 4. This study adopted the technique of panoramic photography using a digital camera to capture multiple images, with the camera center as the rotation axis facing the surrounding environment, and then employed image processing. Subsequently, a difference was created by surrounding the captured images with a ring-shaped cylinder. Three observation points were established for the exhibition. Multimedia web technology was used to dynamically display the panoramic images and combine them into webpage structures. Once the user accessed the webpage, they could click the white arrow shown on the ground to move to a particular position or move the mouse to change the viewing direction. Each painting had a square pattern below it. When it was clicked, an enlarged image of the painting and its title were displayed, as shown in the bottom image in Figure 4.  
Figure 4: _Cont._  
Figure 3: Exhibition of the physical paintings album. In this condition, an HTC Vive COSMOS, New Taipei City, Taiwan, device was used. The VR environment was constructed using 3 ds Max software (2022 version). The electronic files of the 12 paintings were then placed within it. UNITY software (2022 version) was used to integrate the scene with the HMD. The viewing method of this experimental condition was similar to that of the physical environment. The pictures viewed with the HMD moved in accordance with the physical movements of the participants, as shown in Figure 5.  
Figure 4: Painting exhibition with the desktop VR. The image on top is the whole space as seen from the door (the title on the hanging scroll is “the beauty of cloud”), and the photo on the bottom is a magnified image of one of the paintings (the title of painting is “I set out with a farewell to Bai-Di Town gluttered with morning clouds”).