Assessing Spatial Design in Virtual Environments

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments (VEs) are collaboration platforms where group members are represented as avatars and interact in a customizable simulated world. Research from cognitive psychology has shown that it is possible to manipulate nonconscious cognition and behavior through “priming,” a well-known phenomenon in which words and images are used to activate desired concepts in participants’ minds. Our goal in this was to investigate whether priming during the task execution (called contextual priming) using 3D objects in the VE can improve brainstorming performance. To investigate this, we conducted two studies. The first used priming objects specifically related to the task topic and the second used priming objects related to creativity, in general. Compared to VEs without 3D priming objects, our results show that when groups brainstormed in the VEs designed with 3D priming objects, they generated better quality ideas as well as a greater breadth and depth of ideas. Thus, the 3D priming stimuli incorporated in a VE enhances brainstorming, which indicates that the design of VE has a direct effect on team brainstorming performance. Our results also show that target concept activation and task absorption act as the underlying mechanisms, partially mediating the relationship between the design of the VE (i.e., the presence or absence of priming objects) and performance outcomes.

Trails, rails, and over-reliance: How navigation assistance affects route-finding and spatial learning in virtual environments

In this paper, an immersive virtual roller coaster is introduced. A three Degree-Of-Freedom (3DOF) computer controlled simulator with special effects is designed, implemented, and tested. The simulator platform moves in response to control signals generated by a three-dimensional (3D) virtual gaming environment. In order to add more reality to the gaming environment, external effects, that represent a fourth dimension to virtual environment, are added to the simulator environment such as smell, sound, light, and sense of temperature (heat or cold) that are synchronized with the events happening in the 3D virtual gaming environment. The controlled simulator is developed for entertainment purposes and to suit all ages. The proposed system was tested and verified in the sense that the platform interacts with all events occur in the 3D virtual environment and external effects. The proposed 4D entertainment machine can be used in amusement parks and family entertainment centers and malls.

This chapter aimed to reveal how the analysis, design, and development processes should be carried out while history teaching environments are being developed in 3D virtual environments and to set a concrete definition of teaching process in 3D virtual environments. In the history teaching session, the participants were represented in the 3D virtual environment developed in OpenSim simultaneously with their own avatars. They role-played the historical characters and actively participated in the events of that period by using historical reenactment technique in historical spaces. Additionally, this chapter describes the development process of a 3D virtual teaching environment from the design of the teaching process to the implementation. The procedures performed during the preparation of the 3D virtual teaching environment are presented with a flowchart. It is expected that this flowchart, suggested as a 3D virtual instructional design model, will guide researchers through the process of developing teaching implementations in 3D virtual environments in future studies.

The purpose of this case study was to determine if learning occurred within a 3D virtual learning environment by determining if elements of collaboration and Nonaka and Takeuchi's (1995) knowledge spiral were present. A key portion of this research was the creation of a Virtual Learning Environment. This 3D VLE utilized the Torque Game Engine provided by Garage Games and a content pack created by BraveTree Productions, LLC. By creating this 3D didactic constructivist virtual environment, conversations were observed for collaborative and knowledge creation elements. Data for this mixed-design case study were gathered through three sources: the 3D virtual environment; a survey created by the researchers; and follow-up interviews. Findings revealed that the five forms of collaboration (Elementary Clarification, In-Depth Clarification, Inference, Judgment, and Application) amplified the knowledge creation process and indeed occurred within the virtual learning environment. It was also determined that all four modes for knowledge creation (socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization) were observed as well.

BackgroundIt is crucial to use innovative tools to gain clinical reasoning skills through experiential learning in pharmacy education, and one of the most effective tools used in this is virtual reality. However, the lack of research that empirically demonstrates the instructional principles of virtual environment design, especially in the clinical setting, has resulted in a significant gap in the current literature.AimIn this study, it was aimed to determine the instructional design principles of a virtual environment for the clinical pharmacy.MethodThe study was conducted as a design‐based research. The data of the study related to three components of the developed virtual reality environment in pharmacy education (VRPE). These components, scenario development interface‐scenario development interface, virtual environment, and scenario, were collected through interviews, observation, document review, and a system usability scale. Instructional design principles for the VRPE were determined through analysis of the collected data.ResultsThe prominent instructional design principles of the VRPE were revealed as immersion, interaction, diversity, flow, aesthetics‐ergonomic‐universal design, informing, and retest availability. The significance of the study was the adoption of a holistic perspective in the design of a virtual reality environment for pharmacy education. In addition, one of the most critical features of the study was eliminating the expertise barrier in virtual environment design. Thus, it was concluded that the VRPE is an extraordinary tool that can be used for pharmacy education to promote experiential learning.

Advances in Virtual Reality (VR) systems, Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Agent Technology make it possible to design and develop Virtual Training Environments (VTEs), where the trainees can immerse themselves and interact directly with the learning domain. This paper presents the Interaction Specification Workspace (ISW) architecture for the specification and design of virtual environments for training purposes. ISW architecture provides the interaction designer with the capability to specify the training interaction with the virtual environment using the Virtual Reality Multi Flow Graph (VR-MFG) as the underlying interaction specification model. ISW implements a design space, where the processes of interaction specification and design of VTEs take place inside a three-dimensional virtual environment, the objects of which are tools by themselves. Inside this workspace, the designer can associate the abstract objects (the components of the VR-MFG) with “actual” objects of the target virtual environment (kept in a “world” database) and apply a number of agent templates with training capabilities.

In some circumstances, immersion in virtual environments with the aid of virtual reality (VR) equipment can create feelings of anxiety in users and be experienced as something “frightening”, “oppressive”, “alienating”, “dehumanizing”, or “dystopian”. Sometimes (e.g., in exposure therapy or VR gaming), a virtual environment is intended to have such psychological impacts on users; however, such effects can also arise unintentionally due to the environment’s poor architectural design. Designers of virtual environments may employ user-centered design (UCD) to incrementally improve a design and generate a user experience more closely resembling the type desired; however, UCD can yield suboptimal results if an initial design relied on an inappropriate architectural approach. This study developed a framework that can facilitate the purposeful selection of the most appropriate architectural approach by drawing on Norberg-Schulz’s established phenomenological account of real-world architectural modes. By considering the unique possibilities for structuring and experiencing space within virtual environments and reinterpreting Norberg-Schulz’s schemas in the context of virtual environment design, a novel framework was formulated that explicates six fundamental “architectural paradigms” available to designers of virtual environments. It was shown that the application of this framework could easily be incorporated as an additional step within the UCD process.

As educational systems emphasize and experiment with forms of online and remote learning, it is increasingly important to investigate the cultural competence of instructional designers. This chapter addresses the experiences of instructional designers in a 3D virtual learning environment designed for development of cultural competence. Design-based research (DBR) and user experience (UX) methodologies were employed to explore experience of six instructional designers in 3D virtual environment. A taxonomy of experience (ToE) established by Coxon guided qualitative data collection and analysis. Through examples and data, the chapter emphasizes the necessity for instructional designers to keep in mind the challenge of cultural diversity in the backgrounds of students and their own, and bring guidelines and principles into culturally sensitive and responsive instructional design processes. The authors recommend four future research directions, including cross-cultural instructional designer competencies along with research into cultural personas, avatars, and guest-host relations.

The design of virtual environments (VEs) can strongly influence users’ emotions. These VEs are also an important aspect of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) exergames – training system that can inspire athletes to train in a highly motivated way and achieve a higher training intensity. VR-based training and rehabilitation systems can increase a user’s motivation to train and to repeat physical exercises. The surrounding VE can potentially predominantly influence users’ motivation and hence potentially even physical performance. Besides providing potentially motivating environments, physical training can be enhanced by gamification. However, it is unclear whether the surrounding VE of a VR-based physical training system influences the effectiveness of gamification. We investigate whether an emotional positive or emotional negative design influences the sport performance and interacts with the positive effects of gamification. In a user study, we immerse participants in VEs following either an emotional positive, neutral, or negative design and measure the duration the participants can hold a static strength-endurance exercise. The study targeted the investigation of the effects of (1) emotional VE design as well as the (2) presence and absence of gamification. We did not observe significant differences in the performance of the participants independent of the conditions of VE design or gamification. Gamification caused a dominating effect on emotion and motivation over the emotional design of the VEs, thus indicating an overall positive impact. The emotional design influenced the participants’ intrinsic motivation but caused mixed results with respect to emotion. Overall, our results indicate the importance of using gamification and support the commonly used emotional positive VEs for physical training. They further indicate that the design space could also include other emotional directions of VE design.

This study examines the critical importance of audio design in crafting immersive experiences within the metaverse. The analysis focuses on key technologies driving this field, with particular emphasis on spatial audio techniques such as Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTF) and Ambisonics, which enable precise three-dimensional sound positioning. The research investigates adaptive audio rendering, highlighting tools such as Microsoft's Spatial Audio Unity Plugin, which facilitates dynamic soundscape adjustments based on user interactions. Furthermore, the application of artificial intelligence in audio design is explored, with a discussion on the potential of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for synthetic sound production and personalized audio experiences. The study presents two significant case studies: the partnership between TCG World, STYNGR, and Downtown for interactive sonic environments, and research on Audio Augmented Reality (AAR) in art galleries. Ethical considerations, including privacy, accessibility, and the psychological impact of immersive audio, are critically examined. The research concludes by exploring future directions, such as cross-modal integration and emotional AI systems in metaverse audio design, emphasizing the necessity for responsible development practices. Through this comprehensive analysis, the study aims to provide insights into the challenges and opportunities presented by audio design in virtual environments, contributing to the evolving landscape of metaverse technology.

Collaborative virtual assembly environment is a vital computer-aided design tool in product design and can be used as a learning and training tool. It helps in supporting complex product design by enabling designers to collaborate and communicate with other designers involved in the product design. This paper proposes a collaborative virtual assembly environment built in two phases for the immersive and non-immersive environments. Phase one was developed in Unity 3D using Virtual Reality Toolkit (VRTK) and Steam VR. Whereas, phase two was built using Vizard and Vizible. This work aims to allow scientists and engineers to discuss the concept design in a real-time VR environment so that they can interact with the objects and review their work before it is deployed. This paper proposes the system architecture and describes the design and implementation of a collaborative virtual assembly environment. The outcome of this work is to be able to resolve communication and interaction problems that arise during the concept-design phase.

Online systems, especially 3D virtual environments, hold great potential to enrich and expand learning opportunities for those who are challenged by traditional modes of instruction and interaction. In the process of developing a 3D Virtual Learning Environment to support the development and practice of social competence for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders, the iSocial project explored and advanced ideas for social orthotics in virtual environments. By social orthotics the authors mean structures in the environment that overcome barriers to facilitate social interaction and social learning. The vision of social orthotics in a 3D world is to be both assistive and adaptive for appropriate social behavior when the student, peers and guide are represented by avatars in a 3D virtual world designed to support learning and development. This chapter describes the formulation of social orthotics for avatar orientation and conversational turn-taking and describes experiences and lessons from early tests of prototype orthotics.

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments bring people together in real time irrespective of their geographical location to facilitate collaborative learning and working together in an engaging and fulfilling way. However, it can be difficult to amass suitable data to gauge how well students perform in these environments. With this in mind, the current study proposes a methodology for monitoring students’ learning experiences in 3D virtual worlds (VWs). It integrates a computer-based mechanism that mixes software agents with natural agents (users) in conjunction with a fuzzy logic model to reveal evidence of learning in collaborative pursuits to replicate the sort of observation that would normally be made in a conventional classroom setting. Software agents are used to infer the extent of interaction based on the number of clicks, the actions of users, and other events. Meanwhile, natural agents are employed in order to evaluate the students and the way in which they perform. This is beneficial because such an approach offers an effective method for assessing learning activities in 3D virtual environments.

In the rapidly emerging era of untact (“contact-free”) technologies, the requirement for three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments utilized in virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse has seen significant growth, owing to their extensive application across various domains. Current research focuses on the automatic transfer of the style of rendering images within a 3D virtual environment using artificial intelligence, which aims to minimize human intervention. However, the prevalent studies on rendering-based 3D environment-style transfers have certain inherent limitations. First, the training of a style transfer network dedicated to 3D virtual environments demands considerable style image data. These data must align with viewpoints that closely resemble those of the virtual environment. Second, there was noticeable inconsistency within the 3D structures. Predominant studies often neglect 3D scene geometry information instead of relying solely on 2D input image features. Finally, style adaptation fails to accommodate the unique characteristics inherent in each object. To address these issues, we propose a novel approach: a neural rendering-based 3D scene-style conversion technique. This methodology employs semantic nearest-neighbor feature matching, thereby facilitating the transfer of style within a 3D scene while considering the distinctive characteristics of each object, even when employing a single style image. The neural radiance field enables the network to comprehend the geometric information of a 3D scene in relation to its viewpoint. Subsequently, it transfers style features by employing the unique features of a single style image via semantic nearest-neighbor feature matching. In an empirical context, our proposed semantic 3D scene style transfer method was applied to 3D scene style transfers for both interior and exterior environments. This application utilizes the replica, 3DFront, and Tanks and Temples datasets for testing. The results illustrate that the proposed methodology surpasses existing style transfer techniques in terms of maintaining 3D viewpoint consistency, style uniformity, and semantic coherence.