Presence within the virtual reality environment of the international space station

Virtual Reality - Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming an increasingly effective and powerful medium for learning, especially when applied to environments such as the International Space Station (ISS)...     

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     

Antecedents of an experienced sense of virtual community

Sense of virtual community (SOVC) reflects the feeling that individual members have of belonging to an online social group. Yet there is a lack of investigation focusing on its individual-level antecedents. We argue that in order to enhance understanding of how SOVC develops we first need to distinguish between the individual expectations, actions, and the resulting community-related feelings. Drawing upon the uses and gratifications approach, we explore the community members’ expected benefits, their linkages with different types of community participation and consequently with the experienced SOVC. We tested the hypotheses on a sample of 395 members of a virtual community hosted by a Finnish business newspaper. The findings suggest that both forms of participation – reading and posting messages – have a positive impact on SOVC, but the expected benefits differ. Participation by reading messages is mainly driven by the expectation of cognitive benefits, while posting messages seems to be largely driven by the anticipation of both social and personal integrative benefits. Our study contributes by providing a refined SOVC conceptualization and operationalization for virtual-community research, and by opening up the individual-level actions that build up a sense of virtual community.     

虚拟培训中的虚实联动技术

针对传统培训方式的不足,提出了虚实联动的培训方式.通过构建虚拟设备,硬件可编程逻辑控制器(PLC)、PC、虚拟设备三者之间的通信,实现虚拟设备和实体设备之间的联系,并且通过现场控制系统采集实体设备运行数据,将实体设备运行和故障等信息在虚拟设备中实时表现出来,拓展了虚拟培训的新思路.以喷印机虚拟联动系统为例论述了虚拟联动技术的必要性和可行性.     

Three views of virtual reality: an overview

Virtual reality (VR) presents a synthetically generated environment to the user through visual, auditory, and other stimuli. A VR systems's head-mounted display, stereo graphics, and direct manipulation in three dimensions are outlined. Early work in VR and major technological hurdles in the areas of tracking, display, image generation, and software support are reviewed. Research directions and potential applications of VR are discussed     

Applying artificial intelligence to virtual reality: Intelligent virtual environments

Research into virtual environments on the one hand and artificial intelligence and artificial life on the other has largely been carried out by two different groups of people with different preoccupation and interests, but some convergence is now apparent between the two fields. Applications in which activity independent of the user takes place- involving crowds or other agents- are beginning to be tackled, while synthetic agents, virtual humans, and computer pets are all areas in which techniques from the two fields require strong integration. The two communities have much to learn from each other if wheels are not to be reinvented on both sides. This paper reviews the issues arising from combining artificial intelligence and artificial life techniques with those of virtual environments to produce just such intelligent virtual environments. The discussion is illustrated with examples that include environments providing knowledge to direct or assist the user rather than relying entirely on the user's knowledge and skills, those in which the user is represented by a partially autonomous avatar, those containing intelligent agents separate from the user, and many others from both sides of the area.     

From visual simulation to virtual reality to games

During the past decades, the virtual reality community has based its development on a synthesis of earlier work in interactive 3D graphics, user interfaces, and visual simulation. Currently, the VR field is transitioning into work influenced by video games. Because much of the research and development being conducted in the games community parallels the VR community's efforts, it has the potential to affect a greater audience. Given these trends, VR researchers who want their work to remain relevant must realign to focus on game research and development. Leveraging technology from the visual simulation and virtual reality communities, serious games provide a delivery system for organizational video game instruction and training.     

Japanese activities in virtual reality

Most virtual reality hardware in Japan has been imported from the US, and the large-scale applications have focused on games, where Sega Enterprises and Nintendo remain the market leaders. In addition to its successful home video and arcade machines businesses, Sega is moving aggressively into the amusement-park ride market. Outside these markets, Matsushita plans to release three commercial products in spring 1994. One is an immersive system for product showrooms to help Japanese home owners visualize new kitchens before ordering them. Another is a massage chair that uses VR images and sound to help relax users. The third is an exercise bicycle that lets the user cycle through a 3D virtual world while exercising. Many Japanese companies are interested in VR technology as a problem-solving tool. They are making progress in its use in equipment operation. They also realize that the ability to operate devices intuitively by ordinary gesture-like motions can be exploited in many practical fields. This ability could make human-machine interfaces easier, even if these interfaces fall short of outright VR. This article reviews a few recent industry and academic research projects. The current worldwide recession has flattened the overall rate of growth in Japanese research and development spending. Nevertheless, Japan reportedly has approximately 20 major VR research projects, mostly emphasizing communication. Japanese emphases on long-term planning and on targeting development toward specific products are their strengths in this emerging technology     

European activities in virtual reality

We survey European activities in virtual reality, with an emphasis on selected efforts in architecture and sound, telepresence, scientific visualization, simulation, software design, and entertainment. This article surveys European activities and funding for VR with two caveats: First, nearly a year separates writing and publication. For most scientific fields, this publication delay for survey material would be minimal: for virtual reality, significant changes might have since occurred in some programs. We took advantage of the revision period to upgrade our information and the references as much as possible. Second, some long standing, significant European efforts go unmentioned as outside the scope of our short survey or as duplicates of others included. Despite the limitations, this sampling of Europe's leading efforts collectively gives an accurate snapshot of current European activity     

Three views of virtual reality: virtual environments in the USmilitary

A virtual environment is a generic, relatively low-cost real-time interactive simulation. It is shown that the US military has been a primary supporter of real-time simulation for more than 60 years, ever since the development of the Link Flight Instrument Trainer in the late 1930s. The development of flight simulation systems and head-mounted displays are reviewed. The use of virtual environments for team training, battlefield review and tactics development is discussed. Several research projects involving virtual environments and military applications are described     

Seamless interaction in virtual reality

Jot is a novel research interface for virtual reality modeling. This system seamlessly integrates and applies a variety of virtual and physical tools, each customized for specific tasks. The Jot interface not only moves smoothly from one tool to another but also physically and cognitively matches individual tools to the tasks they perform. In particular, we exploit the notion that gestural interaction is more direct, in many cases, than traditional widget based interaction. We also respect the time tested observation that some operations-even conceptually three dimensional ones-are better performed with 1D or 2D input devices, whereas other operations are more naturally performed using stereoscopic views, higher DOF input devices, or both. Ultimately we strive for a 3D modeling system with an interface as transparent as the interaction afforded by a pencil and a sheet of paper. For example, the system should facilitate the tasks of drawing and erasing and provide an easy transition between the two. Jot emerged from our previous work on a mouse based system, called Sketch, for gesturally creating imprecise 3D models. Jot extends Sketch's functionality to a wider spectrum of modeling, from concept design to detailed feature based parametric parts. Jot also extends the interaction in Sketch to better support individual modeling tasks. We extended Sketch's gestural framework to integrate interface components ranging from traditional desktop interface widgets to context sensitive gestures to direct manipulation techniques originally designed for immersive VR     

Public speaking in virtual reality: facing an audience of avatars

What happens when someone talks in public to an audience they know to be entirely computer generated-to an audience of avatars? If the virtual audience seems attentive, well-behaved, and interested, if they show positive facial expressions with complimentary actions such as clapping and nodding, does the speaker infer correspondingly positive evaluations of performance and show fewer signs of anxiety? On the other hand, if the audience seems hostile, disinterested, and visibly bored, if they have negative facial expressions and exhibit reactions such as head-shaking, loud yawning, turning away, falling asleep, and walking out, does the speaker infer correspondingly negative evaluations of performance and show more signs of anxiety? We set out to study this question during the summer of 1998. We designed a virtual public speaking scenario, followed by an experimental study. We wanted mainly to explore the effectiveness of virtual environments (VEs) in psychotherapy for social phobias. Rather than plunge straight in and design a virtual reality therapy tool, we first tackled the question of whether real people's emotional responses are appropriate to the behavior of the virtual people with whom they may interact. The project used DIVE (Distributive Interactive Virtual Environment) as the basis for constructing a working prototype of a virtual public speaking simulation. We constructed as a Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) model, a virtual seminar room that matched the actual seminar room in which subjects completed their various questionnaires and met with the experimenters     

Memory for a virtual reality experience in children and adults according to image quality,emotion, and sense of presence

Virtual Reality - Numerous studies have explored the effects of virtual reality (VR) on adults’ cognition. Little is known, however, of these effects in children. The aim of this study was to...     

From sensory substitute technology to virtual reality research

This paper describes research into sensory substitutes for the disabled, and proposes one basic research approach to assistance technology. It also reports on how the technology is related to virtual reality research.     

PainDroid: an android-based virtual reality application for pain assessment

Earlier studies in the field of pain research suggest that little efficient intervention currently exists in response to the exponential increase in the prevalence of pain. In this paper, we present an Android application (PainDroid) with multimodal functionality that could be enhanced with Virtual Reality (VR) technology, which has been designed for the purpose of improving the assessment of this notoriously difficult medical concern. PainDroid has been evaluated for its usability and acceptability with a pilot group of potential users and clinicians, with initial results suggesting that it can be an effective and usable tool for improving the assessment of pain. Participant experiences indicated that the application was easy to use and the potential of the application was similarly appreciated by the clinicians involved in the evaluation. Our findings may be of considerable interest to healthcare providers, policy makers, and other parties that might be actively involved in the area of pain and VR research.     

Context analysis to support development of virtual reality applications

To develop a usable Virtual Reality system, the prospective context of use of such a system may need to be considered in order to make sure it meets the requirements and restrictions of that context. In this paper, a contextual analysis is described for a virtual reality system to aid medical diagnosis and treatment planning of vascular disorders. Semi-structured interviews were coupled with observations in an ethnographic approach to requirements gathering in the daily work environment of (interventional) radiologists and vascular surgeons. The identified potential usability problems of a fully immersive prototype, coupled with the needs, requirements and real-life environment of the end-users lead to guidelines for the development of a VR application on a semi-immersive desktop environment. The findings lead us to believe that contextual analysis can be a powerful way to inform the design of a VR application by offering an understanding of the context of use and to inform developers of the most appropriate degree of immersiveness of the VR environment.     

Empirical analysis of consumer reaction to the virtual reality shopping mall

The Internet shopping mall has received wide attention from researchers and practitioners due to the fact that it is one of the most killing applications customers can find on the Internet. Though numerous studies have been performed on various issues of the Internet shopping mall, some research issues relating to the user interface of VR (virtual reality) shopping malls still await further empirical investigation. The objective of this study is to investigate whether the user interface of the VR shopping mall positively affects customer satisfaction in comparison with the ordinary shopping mall. For this purpose, we developed a prototype of the VR shopping mall for which the user interface consists of both 3D graphics and an avatar, using it as an experimental medium. 102 valid questionnaires were gathered from active student users of the ordinary shopping mall, and two research hypotheses were then tested to prove whether the three explanatory variables such as convenience, enjoyment, quality assurance improve in the VR shopping mall, and whether customer satisfaction is also significantly enhanced in the VR shopping mall in comparison with the ordinary shopping mall. Additionally, we conducted the PLS (partial least square) analysis to test whether the customer satisfaction is explained significantly by the three explanatory variables or not.     

The virtual playground: an educational virtual reality environment for evaluating interactivity and conceptual learning

The research presented in this paper aims at investigating user interaction in immersive virtual learning environments, focusing on the role and the effect of interactivity on conceptual learning. The goal has been to examine if the learning of young users improves through interacting in (i.e. exploring, reacting to, and acting upon) an immersive virtual environment (VE) compared to non-interactive or non-immersive environments. Empirical work was carried out with more than 55 primary school students between the ages of 8 and 12, in different between-group experiments: an exploratory study, a pilot study, and a large-scale experiment. The latter was conducted in a virtual environment designed to simulate a playground. In this “Virtual Playground,” each participant was asked to complete a set of tasks designed to address arithmetical “fractions” problems. Three different conditions, two experimental virtual reality (VR) conditions and a non-VR condition, that varied the levels of activity and interactivity, were designed to evaluate how children accomplish the various tasks. Pre-tests, post-tests, interviews, video, audio, and log files were collected for each participant, and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. This paper presents a selection of case studies extracted from the qualitative analysis, which illustrate the variety of approaches taken by children in the VEs in response to visual cues and system feedback. Results suggest that the fully interactive VE aided children in problem solving but did not provide a strong evidence of conceptual change as expected; rather, it was the passive VR environment, where activity was guided by a virtual robot, that seemed to support student reflection and recall, leading to indications of conceptual change.     

虚拟现实技术在城市建设中的应用

文章以虚拟现实 ( VR)系统为核心 ,综合利用全数字摄影测量系统、地理信息系统 ( GIS)和网络技术等 ,研究快速建立虚拟城市的技术和方法。通过这个方法 ,将虚拟现实作为一个开放系统和一门实用技术 ,为城市信息化提供一种可交互操作、集成化和人机和谐的方法