AAU Student Projects - visit Aalborg University's student projects portal
A master thesis from Aalborg University

TruePresence: Affecting Social Presence and Uncanniness with Animation Variety in LLM-Based Virtual Humans

Author(s)

Term

4. term

Education

Publication year

2025

Submitted on

2025-05-26

Pages

16 pages

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the perceived Social Presence and Uncanny Valley Effect of a virtual reality application experienced by users engaging with a character built on a large language model (LLM). The investigation features two variations of the same VR experience with different degrees of Animation Variety. Animation variety is studied to investigate its effect on users' perceived Social Presence and Uncanniness from an LLM-Based character built on the Convai framework. The two variants were subsequently tested by using a 7-point Likert-type multiple-choice self-report questionnaire to find the perceived Social Presence and Uncanniness, as well as following qualitative questions to identify the most relevant features of the character have the most impact on the user perception.\\ We found that there is statistically significant evidence to support that increased animation variety of LLM-based Non-Player Characters (NPCs) in VR increases social presence and decreases perceived uncanniness.

Keywords

Documents


Colophon: This page is part of the AAU Student Projects portal, which is run by Aalborg University. Here, you can find and download publicly available bachelor's theses and master's projects from across the university dating from 2008 onwards. Student projects from before 2008 are available in printed form at Aalborg University Library.

If you have any questions about AAU Student Projects or the research registration, dissemination and analysis at Aalborg University, please feel free to contact the VBN team. You can also find more information in the AAU Student Projects FAQs.