This paper investigates the influence of environmental immersion on the visuo-haptic illusion (VHI) within low-fidelity Virtual Reality (VR) settings. While visual dominance often allows the brain to resolve sensory conflicts in favor of visual input, recent research suggests that material properties, such as texture, may be more resistant to this effect. We conducted a preliminary study using a "zero-tracking" setup with a Meta Quest 2, where a static virtual hand replaced real-time tracking to isolate the effects of environmental context. Ten participants were exposed to varying levels of scene immersion-ranging from a blank void to a detailed, auditory-rich sports stadium-while handling physical proxies with different textural properties. Our results indicate that high environmental immersion significantly strengthens visual dominance when haptic discrepancies are subtle, with acceptance rates approaching 100%. However, the illusion collapses when the material mismatch exceeds a certain "tolerance window," leading to haptic dominance regardless of the immersive context. These findings suggest that for low-cost VR simulations, prioritizing semantic and environmental fidelity can compensate for limited tracking hardware, provided that physical props maintain basic textural congruence.
Sripian et al. (2026) studied this question.