Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper explores the use of head-mounted displays (HMDs) as a way to deliver a front row experience to any audience member during a live event. To do so, it presents a two-part user study that compares participants reported sense of presence across three experimental conditions: front row, back row, and back row with HMD (displaying 360° video captured live from the front row). Data was collected using the Temple Presence Inventory (TPI), which measures presence across eight factors. The reported sense of presence in the HMD condition was significantly higher in five of these, including spatial presence, social presence, passive social presence, active social presence, and social richness. We argue that the non-significant differences found in the other three factors – engagement, social realism, and perceptual realism – are either artefacts of participants’ personal taste for the song being performed, or the effects of using a mixed-reality approach. Finally, the paper presents a system description for low-latency, 360° video live streaming using off-the-shelf, affordable equipment and software.