In this project, I have analysed the shift in anxiety when putting the user inside a Virtual Environment and gradually exposing the user to their phobia. In this case the study was targeted at people suffering from Acrophobia/fear of heights, since after a survey I carried out, it seemed to be the most common form of Specific Phobia Anxiety Disorder. After exposure, the user was calmed down using virtual reality and again, the shift in anxiety monitored

As part of my experiment, each candidate was asked to wear a Head Mounted Display running the virtual environment application I created which was aimed at provoking fear of heights to the users. Inside the virtual environment, every user was asked to navigate towards the skyscraper which has a window cleaner lift on its outside. Once there, the user had to enter inside the window cleaner and ascend the skyscraper. Once at the top of the skyscraper, the user was required to exit onto the roof where he was to find a helicopter waiting for him. The user was then asked to go through a ride of the city on an open-doored helicopter while looking outside and trying to count the number of Maltese flags inside the city.

Following the flight inside the virtual environment, each candidate was asked to use the Head Mounted Display for the second part of the experiment. In this part of the experiment, the candidate was required to view a 360 degree video footage of a drone flying through a real city. This allowed me to measure whether the limited graphics inside the virtual environment I created has an effect on the overall immersion the participant felt and also on the anxiety symptoms felt. During this test, every candidate was given a heart rate monitor as well as galvanic skin response levels sensors, to gather quantitative data which was used to determine that a change in anxiety levels. Apart from that, all candidates were asked to fill in a feedback survey, in which they gave feedback about how they felt thought the whole experiment. This gave me a better insight as to what the participant was feeling.

From the results, it is suggested that using a virtual reality system one might be able to provoke a person’s phobia as several participants showed an increased heart-rate while taking part in the experiment. Furthermore, 75% of the participants who took part in a post experiment questionnaire reported feeling some form of symptoms of anxiety such as dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath and palpitations. The results have also showed how a fully synthetic digitally created virtual environments does not have any impact on the level of immersion a virtual reality system can provide.