Gradual Change Blindness in VR

Will you notice if major objects around you is changed?
Likely Not!

This project is inspired by Michael A. Cohen’s “The Changing Room Illusion,” which won first place in The Best Illusion of the Year Contest 2021. This illusion exemplifies gradual change blindness, a phenomenon where people fail to notice changes around them when the changes occur gradually. Before “The Changing Room Illusion,” research on gradual change blindness typically focused on altering individual objects. Cohen’s project introduced a novel example where multiple elements were altered simultaneously.

Research on this phenomenon in virtual reality (VR) has been limited. In 2015, Steinicke et al. conducted a study on change blindness in VR using a stereoscopic equirectangular image with only one change. However, no research has yet explored gradual change blindness involving multiple significant changes in a virtual space. Therefore, I would like to replicate this phenomenon in a to-scale virtual room, allowing the viewer to navigate the room freely.

*Gradual change blindness is slightly different from change blindness. Change blindness occurs when people fail to notice major changes between two scenes if a visual disruption (such as a blink or saccade) occurs in between. In gradual change blindness, there is no such disruption.

Demo Video