Mild stress stimuli built into a non-immersive virtual environment can elicit actual stress responses

The experience of Virtual Reality (VR) can lead to unwanted or wanted psychological stress reactions. Highly immersive VR games for instance utilise extreme, life-threatening, or dangerous situations to achieve those responses from their players. There is also sufficient evidence that in clinical settings and specific situations, such as fear of heights or post-traumatic stress, virtual stimuli can lead to perceived stress for clients. However, there is a gap in research targeting everyday, mild emotional stimuli, which are neither extreme nor specific and which are not presented in an immersive system. To what extent can common stimuli in a non-immersive virtual environment elicit actual stress reactions for its users? We developed a desktop VR system and evaluated it in a study with 54 participants. We could show that virtual stimuli in a common, domestic family environment led to a significant increase in perceived stress as measured by quantitative (self-reports) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews analysed with a General Inductive Approach (GIA)) responses. The results also showed that the introduction of virtual stimuli induced significantly higher levels of perceived workload and sense of presence and led to different physiological reactions. These findings have implications for the design and implementation of non-immersive VR systems.     

Cyber sickness in low-immersive,semi-immersive,and fully immersive virtual reality

Virtual Reality - It is known that virtual reality (VR) experience may cause cyber sickness. One aspect of VR is an immersion or otherwise sense of presence, the sense of feeling oneself in a...     

Demographic differences in presence across seven studies

Virtual Reality - It is often necessary for virtual reality (VR) users to experience a sense of presence for the benefits of VR applications to be realized. However, feelings of presence are...     

A study of cybersickness and sensory conflict theory using a motion-coupled virtual reality system

Sensory conflict theory explains that motion sickness in virtual reality (VR) systems can be caused due to the mismatch between visual and vestibular senses. This study examines whether coupling physical motions to visual stimuli in VR could reduce this discomfort. A motion-coupled VR system developed on a motion platform, providing vestibular cues to supplement visual roll from a head-mounted display (HMD), was used. Three conditions were tested: visual rotation only (stationary), visual-physical motion synchronised (synchronous), and vestibular motion with a self-referenced visual environment. Results show that when users are placed under a visual-vestibular synchronised condition, their subjective miserable score of cybersickness decreased while their comfort level of the overall experience increased. This indicates that a motion-coupled system, if integrated seamlessly in VR, could mitigate cybersickness symptoms.     

Immersive audio-visual scene reproduction using semantic scene reconstruction from 360 cameras

Virtual Reality - As personalised immersive display systems have been intensely explored in virtual reality (VR), plausible 3D audio corresponding to the visual content is required to provide more...     

A framework for fidelity evaluation of immersive virtual reality systems

Virtual Reality - Developments in visual and tracking systems have expanded virtual reality (VR) applications and led to VR becoming a powerful tool for decision making, planning, and conducting...     

Robot-enabled tangible virtual assembly with coordinated midair object placement

The assembly in Virtual Reality (VR) enables users to fit virtual parts into existing 3D models immersively. However, users cannot physically feel the haptic feedback when connecting the parts with the virtual model. This work presents a robot-enabled tangible interface that dynamically moves a physical structure with a robotic arm to provide physical feedback for holding a handheld proxy in VR. This enables the system to provide force feedback during virtual assembly. The cooperation between the physical support and the handheld proxy produces realistic physical force feedback, providing a tangible experience for various virtual parts in virtual assembly scenarios. We developed a prototype system that allowed the operator to place a virtual part onto other models in VR by placing the proxy onto the matched structure attached to a robotic arm. We conducted a user evaluation to explore user performance and system usability in a virtual assembly task. The results indicated that the robot-enabled tangible support increased the task completion time but significantly improved the system usability and sense of presence with a more realistic haptic experience.     

Effects of physical walking on eyes-engaged target selection with ray-casting pointing in virtual reality

Virtual Reality - Target selection in virtual reality (VR) is usually carried out with the need of visual attention. While target selection in VR has been extensively investigated in non-walking...     

Motion parallax from head movement enhances stereoscopic displays by improving presence and decreasing visual fatigue

Virtual reality has advanced significantly recent years. Public attention and most academic studies of late have centered on head-worn VR. However, there are other VR modalities, and different modalities may be suitable in different situations. In this paper, we investigate Fish Tank Virtual Reality (FTVR) systems, which is close to readiness to be part of our everyday lives. In particular, stereoscopic displays and head tracking systems, some of the most important hardware components of FTVR systems, are now widespread commodities. This means that FTVR may soon become a platform for everyday applications. However, further understanding of the capabilities, limitations, and human factors of FTVR systems using modern commodity hardware is critical to the adoption of FTVR. Since one of the most important aspects of a FTVR system is how well it provides a sense of presence to users, we present a study that explores the role of motion parallax when combined with stereopsis in a FTVR system. We measure fatigue and subjective perception of presence using standard questionnaires. We find that users receiving both cues have lower visual fatigue and higher ratings for presence than those receiving stereo cues only. Measurements of participants’ head movement during each task prove valuable in explaining the experimental findings. We conclude that motion parallax is important for enhancing user experience by lowering visual fatigue and increasing users’ subjective perception of presence.     

以学习者为中心的虚拟现实交互学习环境

该文描述在开发虚拟现实化学安全实验系统Vest-Lab的过程中,如何搭建一个以学习者为中心的交互式学习环境。重点阐述了真实感的表现和虚拟场景的创建问题,并讨论了该系统在教学实践中的优势。     

Virtual reality in vestibular assessment and rehabilitation

Previous experiences on vestibular compensation showed that multisensorial stimulations affect postural unbalance recovery. Virtual Environment (VE) exposure seems very useful in vestibular rehabilitation, since the experience gained during VE exposure is transferable to the real world. The rearrangement of the hierarchy of the postural cues was evaluated in 105 patients affected by visual, labyrinthic and somatosensory pathology in normal conditions and during sensorial deprivation. They were divided into five groups according to pathology and compared to 50 normal controls. Our data show that VE exposure is a reliable method to identify the deficient subsystem and the level of substitution. Moreover, Virtual Reality (VR) would accelerate the compensation of an acute loss of labyrinthine function, related to adaptive modifications of the vestibulo-ocular and vestibulo-spinal reflexes, overstimulating the residual labyrinthine function. The residual labyrinthine function is poor in chronic bilateral vestibular deficit and VE exposure should provide sensory substitution or sensory motor reorganisation, thereby modulating the external spatial reference and promoting the reorganisation of the multiple sensory input. The potential for VE exposure perspectives seems very promising when dealing with the vestibular system where there is a continuous rearrangement of different sensorial informations as a result of environmental and age-related changes.     

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.     

Effects of display lag on vection and presence in the Oculus Rift HMD

Virtual Reality - Head-mounted display (HMD)-based virtual reality (VR) is ideally suited for presence and generating compelling visual experiences of self-motion, but users can suffer from side...     

Interfaces That Heal: Coupling Real and Virtual Objects to Treat Spider Phobia

Tactile augmentation is a simple, safe, inexpensive interaction technique for adding physical texture and force feedback cues to virtual objects. This study explored whether virtual reality (VR) exposure therapy reduces fear of spiders and whether giving patients the illusion of physically touching the virtual spider increases treatment effectiveness. Eight clinically phobic students were randomly assigned to one of 3 groups-(a) no treatment, (b) VR with no tactile cues, or (c) VR with a physically "touchable" virtual spider-as were 28 nonclinically phobic students. Participants in the 2 VR treatment groups received three 1-hr exposure therapy sessions resulting in clinically significant drops in behavioral avoidance and subjective fear ratings. The tactile augmentation group showed the greatest progress on behavioral measures. On average, participants in this group, who only approached to 5.5 ft of a live spider on the pretreatment Behavioral Avoidance Test (Garcia-Palacios, 2002), were able to approach to 6 in. of the spider after VR exposure treatment and did so with much less anxiety (see www.vrpain.com for details). Practical implications are discussed.     

Control mapping in virtual reality: effects on spatial presence and controller naturalness

Virtual Reality - This study explores how a video game player’s sense of being in a game world (i.e., spatial presence) is impacted by the use of a virtual reality head-mounted display (VR...     

Effects of electrical brain stimulation on brain indices and presence experience in immersive,interactive virtual reality

Virtual Reality - The subjective presence experience in virtual reality (VR) is associated with distinct brain activation patterns. Particularly, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) seems to...     

Spatial and attentional aftereffects of virtual reality and relations to cybersickness

Virtual Reality - Cybersickness describes the nausea and discomfort that frequently emerges upon exposure to a virtual reality (VR) environment. The extent to which cybersickness leads to temporary...     

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.     

An experimental investigation of menu selection for immersive virtual environments: fixed versus handheld menus

Virtual Reality - With the development of consumer-grade virtual reality (VR) systems, the interface and interaction design for immersive virtual environments have become a critical issue for VR...     

Development of a virtual reality laboratory stressor

Virtual Reality - This research report describes the development of a virtual reality (VR) laboratory stressor to study the effects of exposure to stressful events. The aim of the research was to...