Three views of virtual reality: nonimmersive virtual reality

Nonimmersive virtual reality (VR), which places the user in a 3D environment that can be directly manipulated with a conventional graphics workstation using a monitor, a keyboard; and a mouse, is discussed. The scene is displayed with the same 3D depth cues used in immersive VR: perspective view, hidden-surface elimination, color, texture, lighting, shading and shadows. As in immersive VR, animation and simulation are interactively controlled in response to the user's direct manipulation. Much of the technology used to support immersive and nonimmersive VR is the same. They use the same 3D modeling and rendering and many of the same interaction techniques. The advantages and applications of nonimmersive VR systems are discussed. Immersive and nonimmersive VR systems are compared and hybrid possibilities are reviewed     

The size-weight illusion in team lifting

The purpose of these studies was to examine whether or not there is a size-weight illusion when participants lift containers as a team. In Experiment 1, teams of participants lifted a set of 16 containers that varied in mass and size and reported their perceptions of heaviness and volume. In Experiment 2, participants lifted the same containers individually. A size-weight illusion was demonstrated in each experiment: Reports of perceived heaviness decreased substantially as the volumes of the containers increased for both styles of lifting. However, both the magnitude of the illusion and mean perceived heaviness were greater in the team lift. Actual or potential applications of this research include the development of safe lifting guidelines for team lifting.     

Examining the effect of body ownership in immersive virtual and augmented reality environments

The traditional rubber hand illusion is a psychological experiment where participants are under the illusion that a rubber hand is part of their own body. This paper examines the use of real, virtual and augmented reality environments for identifying the elements that influence body ownership in healthy participants. Compared to the classical experiment where a plastic rubber hand was used, a realistic 3D representation was chosen to create the same illusion this time in both immersive virtual reality and augmented reality. Experiments were performed on 30 volunteers undergoing testing session composed of three stages. Participants were asked to complete two different questionnaires, one measuring their cognitive workload and another one regarding their experience with the rubber hand illusion. In addition, EEG signals of the individuals were recorded, resulting in 90 electroencephalogram datasets. Results indicate correlations between ownership statements with beta and gamma electroencephalogram bands in premotor cortex activity. Link between higher gamma production in ventral premotor area during the illusion was established in previous studies.     

Integrating perceptual and symbolic information in VR

The problem of integrating symbolic and perceptual information becomes more difficult in a fully immersive virtual reality, in which the computer must draw and render the whole visible apparatus in real time. The authors believe that virtual environments should convey the widest possible range of perceptual and symbolic information. They discuss virtual reality as a user interface. To explore the possibilities they create two virtual athletic venues     

The Role of 3-D Sound in Human Reaction and Performance in Augmented Reality Environments

Three-dimensional sound's effectiveness in virtual reality (VR) environments has been widely studied. However, due to the big differences between VR and augmented reality (AR) systems in registration, calibration, perceptual difference of immersiveness, navigation, and localization, it is important to develop new approaches to seamlessly register virtual 3-D sound in AR environments and conduct studies on 3-D sound's effectiveness in AR context. In this paper, we design two experimental AR environments to study the effectiveness of 3-D sound both quantitatively and qualitatively. Two different tracking methods are applied to retrieve the 3-D position of virtual sound sources in each experiment. We examine the impacts of 3-D sound on improving depth perception and shortening task completion time. We also investigate its impacts on immersive and realistic perception, different spatial objects identification, and subjective feeling of "human presence and collaboration". Our studies show that applying 3-D sound is an effective way to complement visual AR environments. It helps depth perception and task performance, and facilitates collaborations between users. Moreover, it enables a more realistic environment and more immersive feeling of being inside the AR environment by both visual and auditory means. In order to make full use of the intensity cues provided by 3-D sound, a process to scale the intensity difference of 3-D sound at different depths is designed to cater small AR environments. The user study results show that the scaled 3-D sound significantly increases the accuracy of depth judgments and shortens the searching task completion time. This method provides a necessary foundation for implementing 3-D sound in small AR environments. Our user study results also show that this process does not degrade the intuitiveness and realism of an augmented audio reality environment     

虚拟多媒体教室的设计和实现

结合现有的工作描述了虚拟多媒体教室系统(VMCS),阐述了该系统的用途和功能,并给出了系统的结构模型;对实现该系统的关键技术进行了分析和总结,包括场景建模方法、实时漫游中多细节层次模型(LOD)技术的运用、基于JAVA的用户接口设计等．最后,对系统的可移植性和今后的工作作了讨论。     

Personality variables and presence

The present study was designed to examine the correlation between five personality traits (empathy, imagination, immersive tendencies, dissociation tendencies and locus of control) and presence. Moreover, this study aimed to identify an optimal virtual reality user’s profile. Eighty-four students (66 women, 18 men) completed personality questionnaires, experienced exposure in a virtual environment and completed a presence questionnaire. Twenty-three women, among them 13 non-Jewish women and no men, neglected to look out the virtual window, and reported lower levels of presence. Presence correlated with immersive tendencies and empathy. However, empathy and internal locus of control were the best predictors for the sense of presence. A correlation between imagination and presence was only found in the group that avoided viewing the virtual window. This study revealed the importance of empathy and internal locus of control in the sense of presence. In addition, our findings suggest that the subject’s imagination has an important role when the virtual environment is restricted and that we must attend to cultural and gender-related factors when investigating therapy using virtual reality technology.     

沉浸式虚拟现实的发展概况及发展趋势

本文简述了沉浸式虚拟现实四个阶段的发展概况,分析了沉浸式虚拟现实的优缺点,探讨了沉浸式虚拟现实的发展趋势.未来,头显设备将会更加轻巧,人机交互将会更加自然,沉浸式虚拟现实将会在各行各业得到普遍的应用.     

Intelligent Cruise-Control Navigation: A new navigation/travel method for use in virtual environments

An important feature of virtual reality is the facility for the user to move around a virtual environment in a natural and easily controlled manner. Navigation, also called locomotion, travel or motion, involves changing the perspective of the user in the virtual environment (VE). It allows the user to move in the VE as well as reorient themselves to look at the world differently. Natural locomotion methods are able to contribute to a sense of presence and reality. The illusion of presence can be lost through unnatural experiences during travel in the VE. This can be caused by poor interactive metaphors or by experiences which do not agree with the user's everyday understanding of the real world. This paper focuses on the navigation method in the VE, one of the major interfaces for the interactivity between human and VE in virtual reality circumstances and worlds. It proposes a new navigation method. Intelligent Cruise-Control Navigation (ICCN), which provides a natural and user-centred approach to navigation in the VE and can improve the user's sense of reality and presence. ICCN is composed of three major phases: Constant Velocity Navigation, Collision Detection and Avoidance, and Path Adjustment. The ICCN can reduce the user's fatigue and improve the user's presence in the VE. The small experimental study reported in this paper suggests that the ICCN will be a natural, straightforward, and useful navigation interface in VE.     

3DIVE: An Immersive Environment for Interactive Volume Data Exploration

This paper describes an immersive system,called 3DIVE,for interactive volume data visualization and exploration inside the CAVE virtual environment.Combining interactive volume rendering and virtual reality provides a netural immersive environment for volumetric data visualization.More advanced data exploration operations,such as object level data manipulation,simulation and analysis ,are supported in 3DIVE by several new techniques,In particular,volume primitives and texture regions ae used for the rendering,manipulation,and collision detection of volumetric objects;and the region-based rendering pipeline is integrated with 3D image filters to provide an image-based mechanism for interactive transfer function design.The system has been recently released as public domain software for CAVE/ImmersaDesk users,and is currently being actively used by various scientific and biomedical visualization projects.     

How level of realism influences anxiety in virtual reality environments for a job interview

This study describes how the level of graphical realism required in a virtual social simulation setting can be therapeutically useful in reducing job interview anxiety through exposure. We developed a virtual job interview simulation at a university career service to help student populations faced with the prospect of their first job interview. The virtual job interview simulation can deliver a realistic mock job interview within a high-quality immersive system that is similar to professional virtual reality (VR) systems. We conducted two experimental studies with a common theme: the role of graphical reality of the virtual interviewer and the immersive visual display in the virtual job interview simulation. The results are presented in this study based on a psycho-physiological approach, revealing variation in the distribution of participants′ anxiety state across various VR conditions. The overall conclusion of this study is that the sense of anxiety is less correlated to the graphical realism in VR environment even though the more graphically detailed the virtual human was, the more it provoked a sense of presence. In addition, at least some degree of physical immersion is needed to maintain anxiety levels over the course of VR exposure.     

Inclusion of immersive virtual learning environments and visual control systems to support the learning of students with Asperger syndrome

This paper presents the use of immersive virtual reality systems in the educational intervention with Asperger students. The starting points of this study are features of these students' cognitive style that requires an explicit teaching style supported by visual aids and highly structured environments. The proposed immersive virtual reality system, not only to assess the student's behavior and progress, but also is able to adapt itself to the student's specific needs. Additionally, the immersive reality system is equipped with sensors that can determine certain behaviors of the students. This paper determines the possible inclusion of immersive virtual reality as a support tool and learning strategy in these particular students' intervention. With this objective two task protocols have been defined with which the behavior and interaction situations performed by participant students are recorded. The conclusions from this study talks in favor of the inclusion of these virtual immersive environments as a support tool in the educational intervention of Asperger syndrome students as their social competences and executive functions have improved.     

May I experience more presence in doing the same thing in virtual reality than in reality? An answer from a simulated job interview

Is it possible to experience more presence in doing the same thing in virtual reality than in reality? According to the well known definition of presence as “disappearance of mediation”, the answer is no: technology is a barrier, a mediating tool that can only reduce the level of presence experienced in an interaction. However, the increasing diffusion of a technology like augmented reality that adds a technological layer of information to the real world suggests the opposite: the experience of “being there” may be influenced by the ability of “making sense there”.To explore this issue we used a sample of 20 university students to evaluate the level of presence experienced in two different settings: an immersive virtual reality job simulation and a real world simulation that was identical to its VR counterpart (same interviewer, same questions) but without technological mediation and without any social and cultural cues in the environment that may give a better meaning to both the task and its social context.Self-report data, and in particular the scores in the Spatial Presence and the Ecological Validity ITC-SOPI scales, suggest that experienced presence was higher during the virtual interview than in the real world simulation. This interpretation was confirmed by subjective (higher in VR) but not by objective (Skin Conductance) anxiety scores. These data suggest a vision of presence as a social construction, in which reality is co-constructed in the relationship between actors and their environments through the mediation of physical and cultural artifacts.     

The influence of virtual presence: Effects on experienced cognitive load and learning outcomes in educational computer games

Does the immersive design of an educational gaming environment affect learners’ virtual presence and how much do they learn? Does virtual presence affect learning? This study tries to answer these questions by examining the differences in virtual presence and learning outcomes in two different computer-based multimedia environments: a gaming environment with high immersive design vs. hypertext learning environment with low immersive design. As the main focus, the effect of virtual presence on learning is also explained and tested. By identifying virtual presence as a variable that may determine learning, it is argued that computer gaming environments present a new challenge for researchers to investigate, particularly, the effects of virtual presence on the immersive design of games in order to help designers to predict which instructional configurations will maximize learning performance. In general, results revealed that the high-immersive gaming environment leads to the strongest form of virtual presence but also decreased learning. Although regression analyses indicate that virtual presence positively influences trivial- and non-trivial learning outcomes, learners who learned in a low-immersive environment outperformed the gaming group. A mediation analysis showed that the relation between virtual presence and non-trivial learning outcomes is partly mediated through increased cognitive load.     

The relationship between individual characteristics and experienced presence

People experience different levels of presence (e.g.  and ), and different levels of cybersickness (Sharples, Cobb, Moody, & Wilson, 2008) even though they are immersed in the same virtual environment setting. In the current study, we raised the question how differences in individual characteristics might relate to differences in sensed presence for a virtual environment related to public speaking. The individual characteristics included in the experiment were related to visual abilities, personality traits, cognitive styles, and demographic factors. We recruited 88 participants, who were first immersed in a non-stereoscopic neutral environment, and then in a public speaking world: once with stereoscopic rendering and once without stereoscopic rendering, in a counter-balanced order. The results showed that immersive tendency and monocular visual ability were significantly correlated with presence and these correlations were consistent among the three virtual environments. Immersive tendencies and its subscale “involvement” were also found to be significantly correlated with cybersickness in all three worlds. Screening people on these variables may help to recognize the users who are more likely to benefit from virtual reality applications and may help to reduce the number of dropouts during virtual reality exposure therapy.     

How the physical appearance of companions affects females with high or low social physique anxiety: a virtual reality exercise study

Virtual Reality - Technologies such as virtual reality (VR), an immersive computer-based environment that induces a feeling of mental and physical presence, are becoming increasingly popular for...     

基于虚拟现实的机场消防救援虚拟演练平台

针对机场实地消防应急演练中人力物资消耗多、演练组织协调难,以及桌面式演练中情景感知支持不足等缺陷,提出一种基于虚拟现实技术的机场消防应急救援虚拟演练平台。基于虚拟现实技术的特点,采用三维建模技术构建机场消防救援场景中典型三维实体模型。利用粒子系统实现火灾虚拟场景及应急处置特效,并基于Unity3D引擎实现教员和学员人机交互界面。借助于虚拟现实头盔和手柄支持学员进入虚拟演练场景展开交互。平台测试表明:平台具有良好的易用性、稳定性和实时性,可以支持实现低成本、高沉浸感的机场消防救援虚拟演练。     

虚拟现实技术及其在建筑漫游中的应用

在建筑展示中研究并运用先进的虚拟现实技术,可以更好地满足建筑物展示的网络化、三维形象化、交互等功能要求,使人产生身临其境的感觉：本文介绍了虚拟现实技术的应用现状及国内外发展情况,重点分析了VRML、OpengL、MultiGen Creator、Vega、Java和3DSMax等不同软件在建筑漫游中的应用,指出了虚拟现实技术在建筑漫游中存在的问题和今后的发展趋势,阐述了虚拟现实技术在建筑漫游中重要的现实意义。     

Processing presence: how users develop spatial presence through an immersive virtual reality game

Virtual Reality - A primary affordance of virtual reality (VR) headsets is to give the user spatial presence or the illusion of being in the virtual environment. Although considerable research...     

沉浸式虚拟训练中的虚拟手操控技术研究

将人手的自然动作加入沉浸式虚拟现实系统中,可有效提高系统的沉浸感和交互性,简便快捷、成本低廉的虚拟手建模及操控技术,有助于此项内容的推广应用;在对虚拟手骨骼结构模型分析的基础上,提出了基于Leap Motion的虚拟手控制方法和流程;以维修训练为任务背景,设计了四种用于虚拟手操作的手势规则,并对实现流程和关键技术进行了分析;构建基于Unity3D引擎的原型系统对虚拟手进行仿真验证,结果表明,基于Leap Motion的虚拟手操控简单、交互自然,可以满足虚拟现实系统交互需要。