Does a Head-Mounted Display Worsen Inattentional Blindness?

Research has shown that people are able to judge distances accurately in full-cue, real-world environments using visually directed actions. However, in virtual environments viewed with head-mounted display (HMD) systems, there is evidence that people act as though the virtual space is smaller than intended. This is a surprising result given how well people act in real environments. The behavior in the virtual setting may be linked to distortions in the available visual cues or to a person's ability to locomote without vision. Either could result from issues related to added mass, moments of inertia, and restricted field of view in HMDs. This article describes an experiment in which distance judgments based on normal real-world and HMD viewing are compared with judgments based on real-world viewing while wearing two specialized devices. One is a mock HMD, which replicated the mass, moments of inertia, and field of view of the HMD and the other an inertial headband designed to replicate the mass and moments of inertia of the HMD, but constructed to not restrict the field of view of the observer or otherwise feel like wearing a helmet. Distance judgments using the mock HMD showed a statistically significant underestimation relative to the no restriction condition but not of a magnitude sufficient to account for all the distance compression seen in the HMD. Indicated distances with the inertial headband were not significantly smaller than those made with no restrictions.

This work presents the design and evaluation of a set of three mini exercise games (exergames), called “Ellic’s Exercise Class,” which allows people to play in virtual reality (VR) using a head-mounted display (HMD) with the intention to promote physical activities. The exergames require the player to move hands, arms, and body to interact with sporting gameplay events. The game design methodology considers both display advantages and physical limitations in VR technologies. The games are evaluated in a usability study with the goal to understand participants’ performance, gaming experience, effectiveness in motivating them to move, and their exercise intensity levels. In the study, we compare play of games in a VR environment simulated through an HMD with the play in front of a standard large flat-screen display (LFD), while ensuring the difficulty level of gameplay to be same in both. The participants’ moving distances and their answers in questionnaires show that they become more active and engaged when playing exergames with HMD, but according to heart rate data, there is not significant evidence that playing with HMD would be better than that with LFD in terms of increasing the energy expenditure. We discuss the findings in accordance with the relationship and independence between engagement and exertion in exergaming.

ObjectivesThe need for remote delivery of mental health interventions including instruction in meditation has become paramount in the wake of the current global pandemic. However, the support one may usually feel within the physical presence of an instructor may be weakened when interventions are delivered remotely, potentially impacting one’s meditative experiences. Use of head-mounted displays (HMD) to display video-recorded instruction may increase one’s sense of psychological presence with the instructor as compared to presentation via regular flatscreen (e.g., laptop) monitor. This research therefore evaluated a didactic, trauma-informed care approach to instruction in mindfulness meditation by comparing meditative responses to an instructor-guided meditation when delivered face-to-face vs. by pre-recorded 360° videos viewed either on a standard flatscreen monitor (2D format) or via HMD (i.e., virtual reality [VR] headset; 3D format).MethodsYoung adults (n = 82) were recruited from a university introductory course and experienced a 360° video-guided meditation via HMD (VR condition, 3D format). They were also randomly assigned to practice the same meditation either via scripted face-to-face instruction (in vivo [IV] format) or when viewed on a standard laptop display (non-VR condition, 2D format). Positive and negative affect and meditative experience ratings were self-reported and participants’ maintenance of focused attention to breathing (i.e., meditation breath attention scores [MBAS]) were recorded during each meditation.ResultsMeditating in VR (3D format) was associated with a heightened experience of awe overall. When compared to face-to-face instruction (IV format), VR meditation was rated as less embarrassing but also less enjoyable and more tiring. When compared to 2D format, VR meditations were associated with greater experiences of relaxation, less distractibility from the process of breathing, and less fatigue. No differences were found between VR and non-VR meditation in concentration (MBAS). Baseline posttraumatic stress symptoms were risk factors for experiencing distress while meditating in either (VR and non-VR) instructional format. Of those who reported a preference for one format, approximately half preferred the VR format and approximately half preferred the IV format.ConclusionsRecorded 360° video instruction in meditation viewed with a HMD (i.e., VR/3D format) appears to offer some experiential advantage over instructions given in 2D format and may offer a safe—and for some even preferred—alternative to teaching meditation face-to-face.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12671-021-01612-w.

A fundamental task of a virtual-environment system is to present images that change appropriately as the user's head moves. Latency produces registration error causing the scene to appear spatially unstable. To improve the spatial stability of the scene, we built a system that, immediately before scanout to a head-mounted raster display, selects a portion of each scanline from an image rendered at a wider display width. The pixel selection corrects for yaw head rotations and effectively reduces latency for yaw to the millisecond range. In informal evaluations, users consistently judged visual scenes more stable and reported no additional visual artifacts with horizontal scanline selection than the same system without. Scanline-selection hardware can be added to existing virtual-reality systems as an external device between the graphics card and the raster display.

In recent years, providing additional visual feedback about the interaction forces has been found to offer benefits to haptic-assisted teleoperation. However, there is limited insight into the effects of the design of force feedback-related visual cues and the type of visual display on the performance of teleoperation of robotic arms executing industrial tasks. In this study, we provide new insights into this interaction by extending these findings to the haptic assistance teleoperation of a simulated robotic arm in a virtual environment, in which the haptic assistance is comprised of a set of virtual fixtures. We design a novel method for providing visual cues about the interaction forces to complement the haptic assistance and augment visual feedback in virtual reality with a head-mounted display. We evaluate the visual cues method and head-mounted display method through human factors experiments in a teleoperated dross removal use case. The results show that both methods are beneficial for task performance, each of them having stronger points in different aspects of the operation. The visual cues method was found to significantly improve safety in terms of peak collision force, whereas the head-mounted display additionally improves the performance significantly. Furthermore, positive scores of the subjective analysis indicate an increased user acceptance of both methods. This work provides a new study on the importance of visual feedback related to (interaction) forces and spatial information for haptic assistance and provides two methods to take advantage of its potential benefits in the teleoperation of robotic arms.

We used body sway to evaluate a viewer's sense of presence with three kinds of 3D displays as follows: a head mounted display (HMD), a 70 inch 3D display and a consumer 3D television. This expedient used images with a fixed foreground and a rolling background as the visual stimuli to induce body sway. The images were taken from a boat rolling at five different frequencies (approx. 0.125, 0.20, 0.25, 0.33, 0.50 Hz). We examined eight healthy adults viewing each of the five images for three minutes on each display. We evaluated body sway using a motion analyzing system to measure the displacement of a marker placed on the head of the subjects. It was found that at all rolling frequencies of the image background, the HMD induced the greatest amount of body sway followed by the large 3D display and then the consumer 3D television. The amount of body sway was the greatest when the rolling frequency was 0.33 Hz. The results showed the amount of body sway depended on the type of display and the rolling frequency.

Recent advances in the field of Virtual Reality (VR) using Head Mounted Display (HMD) has presented a new medium for immersive experiences. Designing for this medium does have its challenges, and designers and developers must adopt new design processes and pipeline for creating and manipulating virtual spaces in VR. There have been several works of research within similar fields of 3D manipulation with an HMD, but recent technological strides demand new efforts to translate prior knowledge toward the development of new and innovative tools. In this paper, we propose the design and implementation of a web-based authoring tool that exploits VR technology in the creation of the virtual spaces using an immersive Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE). The purpose is a multi-user collaboration platform for the web browser adaptable to a wide variety of cases and purposes and which allows multiple and dissimilar stakeholders to create and manipulate virtual spaces in collaboration, either recreate real-world scenes or construct new digital environments using their imagination.

Immersion is used to describe the degree of psychological engagement with a computer game. A study was performed to investigate the relative contribution of game demand (easy, hard, impossible) and display type (small 5 display, large TV display, head-mounted display) on the experience of immersion. Fifteen participants played a racing game in a range of conditions. Players' experience of immersion was captured via a subjective questionnaire and evoked cortical potentials to an auditory oddball task. Results indicated that slow wave potentials were sensitive to task demand, i.e. impossible demand reduced attention to the game. There was also a weak effect of display type at both frontal and central sites that was indicative of greater immersion for the large TV screen compared to other display types. This study provides preliminary data on the decomposition of immersion into sensory and cognitive components.

Virtual reality (VR) is usually used to simulate complex visual scenes with a head-mounted display (HMD). However, VR can also be used to obtain better control over the visual environment and to monitor ocular dynamics during listening experiments. In this study, a low-cost HMD was used to track eye gaze and pupil diameter during a dichotic listening task in a simple virtual environment that simulated a computer display. The pupillometry results from the VR environment were compared to those obtained on the same task with a desktop monitor research-grade eye tracker. Participants recalled digits in the right ear and ignored interfering digits in the left ear. It was hypothesized that greater pupil dilation would be observed for dichotic compared to monotic listening with both HMD and research-grade eye trackers. Preliminary data support this hypothesis. The HMD was also evaluated for its potential to collect eye-tracking data in tablet-based clinical speech-in-noise tasks not originally designed for pupillometry. Results suggest that the task-evoked pupil response can be measured with the HMD on clinical tasks and a VR-based system has potential as a low-cost clinical tool to collect objective measures of listening effort.

Recupera algunos de los elementos menos estudiados y reconocidos en el ensayo latinoamericano: su profunda vocación de reflexión, diálogo y mediación intelectual; su plasticidad y apertura a la búsqueda del sentido; su vínculo con la sociabilidad, la conversación y la generación de un espacio simbólico de encuentro; su capa cidad de establecer una nueva retroalimentación entre lectura y escritura.

Multiple authors have proposed a city metaphor for visualizing software. While early approaches have used threedimensional rendering on standard two-dimensional displays, recently researchers have started to use head-mounted displays to visualize software cities in immersive virtual reality systems (IVRS). For IVRS of a higher order it is claimed that they offer a higher degree of engagement and immersion as well as more intuitive interaction. On the other hand, spatial orientation may be a challenge in IVRS as already reported by studies on the use of IVRS in domains outside of software engineering such as gaming, education, training, and mechanical engineering or maintenance tasks. This might be even more true for the city metaphor for visualizing software. Software is immaterial and, hence, has no natural appearance. Only a limited number of abstract aspects of software are mapped onto visual representations so that software cities generally lack the details of the real world, such as the rich variety of objects or fine textures, which are often used as clues for orientation in the real world. In this paper, we report on an experiment in which we compare navigation in a particular kind of software city (EvoStreets) in two variants of IVRS. One with head-mounted display and hand controllers versus a 3D desktop visualization on a standard display with keyboard and mouse interaction involving 20 participants.

Power grid operation is a very safe operation site, it is very important to be able to carry out related operations in accordance with the safe operation process, the existing traditional safe operation process, mainly in the traditional teaching mode or simulated real scene operation mode. In the links of management and training, operators lack intuitive experience and interaction, and they are not enough to show the serious consequences of illegal operation; As the head-mounted display becomes the most important interactive virtual reality display device, the 3d interactive display and the expressive force of the game engine are gradually improved, significantly improving participants’ sense of immersion. Virtual reality technology can be used to build a simulation teaching platform for authentic visual experience, authentic representation of work flow and convincing interactive feedback. Virtual reality technology is used to establish a practical environment for grid operation in the virtual three-dimensional space of the computer that integrates class a illegal operation events. Users participating in the learning practice can operate in the virtual space according to the process. In this paper, based on unity built-in HAPI unet and third-party plug-in VRTK, the complex interaction of large-scale training business process is realized. Through VRTK, steam VR interface, the handle button state is obtained and information is transmitted on multiple instances, so as to determine the transfer and pickup state of interactive objects.

Emergency and disaster medical care often face resource or equipment shortages. 3D printing technology has been proven to be effective in cases with insufficient supply chains. MAYO tubes and stethoscopes are essential components of ABCDE patient examinations; however, 3D-printed variants have not been fully tested. These 3D-printed instruments were substituted and validated in a simulated pre-hospital environment.In total, 26 participants were included in this study. Fifteen clinicians or paramedics with at least 3 years of professional experience and 10 medical students. One student was excluded because he had relevant experience with emergency care. As basic tasks, the placement of MAYO tubes and auscultation with stethoscopes were performed using medical simulators. 3D printed instruments were compared with conventional clinical devices by measuring the time required for the intervention, success rate, and user satisfaction. In the study FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), SLS (Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), and SLA (stereolithography) 3D printing were used in this study.The times required for implementation and auscultation were examined for each instrument. There was no significant difference between the MAYO tube (p = 0.798) and the stethoscope (p = 0.676). In the case of stethoscopy, the study investigated the correct diagnosis, and no significant difference was found (p = 0.239), although an interesting trend was observed. Regarding the MAYO tube, the study found no significant difference in correct position formation (p = 0.163). The experience levels of the groups did not influence these factors. However, significant differences in user satisfaction were found in both cases in favour of the conventional versions (p < 0.001).Overall, the results of this study suggest that 3D-printed devices could be suitable replacements for clinic-based devices in emergency situations. The 3D-printed devices did not perform inferiorly at any of the indicated points compared to their classical counterparts. However, the practical applicability of the devices used in this study requires further investigation.

Perceptual thresholds for display lag in a real visual environment are not affected by field of view or psychophysical technique

To experience a real soap bubble show, materials and tools are required, as are skilled performers who produce the show. However, in a virtual space where spatial and temporal constraints do not exist, bubble art can be performed without real materials and tools to give a sense of immersion. For this, the realistic expression of soap bubbles is an interesting topic for virtual reality (VR). However, the current performance of VR soap bubbles is not satisfying the high expectations of users. Therefore, in this study, we propose a physically based approach for reproducing the shape of the bubble by calculating the measured parameters required for bubble modeling and the physical motion of bubbles. In addition, we applied the change in the flow of the surface of the soap bubble measured in practice to the VR rendering. To improve users’ VR experience, we propose that they should experience a bubble show in a VR HMD (Head Mounted Display) environment.