Evaluating an immersive virtual environment prototyping and simulation system

For efficient collaboration between participants, eye gaze is seen as being critical for interaction. Teleconferencing systems such as the AcessGrid allow users to meet across geographically disparate rooms but as of now there seems no substitute for face to face meetings. This paper gives an overview of some preliminary work that looks towards integrating eye gaze into an immersive Collaborative Virtual Environment and assessing the impact that this would have on interaction between the users of such a system. An experiment was conducted to assess the difference between users abilities to judge what objects an avatar is looking at with only head gaze being viewed and also with eye and head gaze data being displayed. The results from the experiment show that eye gaze is of vital importance to the subjects correctly identifying what a person is looking at in an immersive virtual environment. This is followed by a description of how the eye tracking system has been integrated into an immersive collaborative virtual environment and some preliminary results from the use of such a system.

In this pilot study, we aimed to explore the sense of presence and the physiological response evoked by an immersive virtual environment by using a modern head-mounted display (HMD) while performing a driving task in our simulator. We found an increase in mean whole session electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR) as well as during emergency maneuvers events, showing a stronger response and more extended response when driving in the immersive simulation when compared with the standard simulation. At this proof of concept phase we were able to register and detect physiological signal differences between display modalities, suggesting deeper sense of presence when driving in an immersive environment.

We propose a methodological framework to use immersive virtual environments (IVEs) in head-mounted displays for environmental design research. IVEs offer researchers with experimental control and realistic representations of environments with high levels of ecological validity. IVEs are also increasingly being used to visualize proposed designs. Despite these tremendous benefits, IVEs are underutilized in environmental design research. We are unaware of preexisting frameworks that synthesize the methodological decisions related to the use of IVEs to conduct environmental design research. We define the concepts necessary to conduct IVE research (virtual reality [VR], IVEs, ecological validity, visual realism, behavioral realism, and contextual realism). We also summarize the available study designs (correlational studies, experimental studies, and performance evaluations) and software systems used to create IVEs. We conclude with a conceptual framework that describes how research questions and study designs inform IVE selection and ecological validity. This framework is accompanied by a workflow that operationalizes the creation and use of IVEs in research. VR provides a robust and innovative research strategy for environmental design research because of its high degree of experimental control, rich data collection options, and opportunities for systematic evaluation of alternative design configurations.

It is well known that distance estimation in immersive virtual reality environments suffers from compression when viewed from an egocentric perspective with a head mounted display. While previous research indicates that providing the user with a virtual avatar with high geometric and motion fidelity may alleviate this problem, little work has been done to investigate which properties of the avatar's representation influence the distance estimation and how. In this poster we report the results of an evaluation of the user's distance perception with different avatar representations. Our results indicate that anthropometric fidelity of the avatar has stronger effect on the distance perception than its visual fidelity.

Increasingly, business pressures drive development projects toward global development in which the systems and software development team is distributed over two or more geographical locations. Co-location allows improved communication, confidence, familiarity, and trust that facilitate rapid information sharing, mentoring, problem resolution, and so on. Previous observations indicate that improving the speed and cost of software development while distributing it across a global team requires remediation, likely the acquisition and deployment of collaboration technology. This paper describes an ongoing corporate experiment aimed at improving collaborative software development that is increasingly spread over 4 continents, 7 countries, and over 20 regional facilities. It involves the use of an immersive networked virtual environment (NVE) for the development of aviation electronics.

Spatial-temporal event-driven modeling for occupant behavior studies using immersive virtual environments

In this study, we examined the perception and understanding of spatial volumes within immersive and non-immersive virtual environments by comparison with representation using conventional media. We examined the relative effectiveness of these conditions in enabling the translation to a tangible representation, through a series of design experiments. Students experienced, assessed, and analysed spatial relationships of volumes and spaces and subsequently constructed real models of these spaces. The goal of our study is to identify how designers perceive space in Virtual Environments (VEs). We explore issues of quality, accuracy and understanding of reconstructing architectural space and forms. By comparison of the same spatial performance task undertaken within a Head Mounted Display, screen-based and real 2D environment, we are able to draw some conclusions about spatial understanding in immersive VE activity.

Computer simulations used to study food purchasing behavior can be separated into low immersion virtual environments (LIVE), which use personal computers and standard monitors to display a scene, and high immersion virtual environments (HIVE) which use virtual reality technology such as head-mounted displays to display a scene. These methods may differ in their ability to create feelings of presence or cybersickness that would influence the usefulness of these approaches. In this present study, thirty-one adults experienced a virtual supermarket or fast-food restaurant using a LIVE system or a HIVE system. Feelings of presence and cybersickness were measured using questionnaires or physiological responses (heart rate and electrodermal activity). The participants were also asked to rate their ability to complete the set task. The results of this study indicate that participants reported a higher sense of presence in the HIVE scenes as compared to the LIVE scenes (p < 0.05). The participant's heart rate and electrodermal activity were significantly higher in the HIVE scene treatment when compared to the LIVE scene (p < 0.05). There was no difference in the participant's ability to complete tasks in the different scenes. In addition, feelings of cybersickness were not different between the HIVE and LIVE scenes.

Fuzzy logic systems are promising for efficient obstacle avoidance. However, it is difficult to maintain the correctness, consistency, and completeness of a fuzzy rule base constructed and tuned by a human expert. A reinforcement learning method is capable of learning the fuzzy rules automatically. However, it incurs a heavy learning phase and may result in an insufficiently learned rule base due to the curse of dimensionality. In this paper, we propose a neural fuzzy system with mixed coarse learning and fine learning phases. In the first phase, a supervised learning method is used to determine the membership functions for input and output variables simultaneously. After sufficient training, fine learning is applied which employs reinforcement learning algorithm to fine-tune the membership functions for output variables. For sufficient learning, a new learning method using a modification of Sutton and Barto's model is proposed to strengthen the exploration. Through this two-step tuning approach, the mobile robot is able to perform collision-free navigation. To deal with the difficulty of acquiring a large amount of training data with high consistency for supervised learning, we develop a virtual environment (VE) simulator, which is able to provide desktop virtual environment (DVE) and immersive virtual environment (IVE) visualization. Through operating a mobile robot in the virtual environment (DVE/IVE) by a skilled human operator, training data are readily obtained and used to train the neural fuzzy system.

2D human-computer interaction techniques in immersive virtual environments

There are increasing new advances in virtual reality technologies as well as a rise in immersive virtual environments research and user experience research. Within this framework, we decided to address the overall user experience in immersive virtual environments. Indeed, in our point of view, this topic is not fully dealt with in the scientific literature, neither in terms of user experience components nor in terms of user experience measurement methods. It is in this context that we conducted a study aiming at proposing and validating a unified questionnaire on user experience in immersive virtual environment(IVEQ). Our questionnaire contains 10 subscales measuring presence, engagement, immersion, flow, usability, skill, emotion, experience consequence, judgement and technology adoption. The construction of our questionnaire was based on existing ones. It was tested on 116 participants after they use the edutainment virtual environment "Think and Shoot". Results show that 9 out of 10 subscales and 68 out of 87 items are reliable as demonstrated by an internal consistency analysis with Cronbach's alpha and an item analysis. Findings also indicate that the scale scores from 6 subscales are considered normal distributed (e.g. presence) whereas the scale scores from 3 subscales are considered negatively skewed (e.g. skill). This study provides important new insight into UX in IVEs assessment.

To further the study of learning in the context of immersive virtual technologies, this systematic literature review addressed the following research questions: ‘How is self-efficacy being studied in immersive virtual learning environments?’ ‘What kinds of self-efficacy findings have been made in immersive virtual learning environments?’ The peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles included in this study were published in English between January 2014 and January 2020. A narrative synthesis was created for understanding the various aspects of the topic. During the process, the scarcity of experimental research on self-efficacy in immersive virtual learning environments was revealed. The results bring to light the mixed self-efficacy findings in the context of immersive virtual learning and underline the importance of ensuring the quality of the experimental designs in future research. The study of self-efficacy in this context is suggested to benefit from increased attention to the questions of methodology and measurement. To further the goals of immersive virtual learning research, extending the participant base of the experiments by engaging in working life collaboration is strongly recommended.

Weight perception in virtual environments generally can be achieved with haptic devices. However, most of these are hard to integrate in an immersive virtual environment (IVE) due to their technical complexity and the restriction of a user's movement within the IVE. We describe two simple methods using only a wireless light-weight finger-tracking device in combination with a physics simulated hand model to create a feeling of heaviness of virtual objects when interacting with them in an IVE. The first method maps the varying distance between tracked fingers and the thumb to the grasping force required for lifting a virtual object with a given weight. The second method maps the detected intensity of finger pinch during grasping gestures to the lifting force. In an experiment described in this paper we investigated the potential of the proposed methods for the discrimination of heaviness of virtual objects by finding the just noticeable difference (JND) to calculate the Weber fraction. Furthermore, the workload that users experienced using these methods was measured to gain more insight into their usefulness as interaction technique. At a hit ratio of 0.75, the determined Weber fraction using the finger distance based method was 16.25% and using the pinch based method was 15.48%, which corresponds to values found in related work. There was no significant effect of method on the difference threshold measured and the workload experienced, however the user preference was higher for the pinch based method. The results demonstrate the capability of the proposed methods for the perception of heaviness in IVEs and therefore represent a simple alternative to haptics based methods.

In an initial study, we characterized the properties of human reach motion in the presence or absence of visuo-haptic feedback in real and Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) or virtual reality within a participant’s maximum arm reach. Our goal is to understand how physical reaching actions to the perceived location of targets in the presence or absence of visuo-haptic feedback are different between real and virtual viewing conditions. Typically, participants reach to the perceived location of objects in the three-dimensional (3D) environment to perform selection and manipulation actions during 3D interaction in applications such as virtual assembly or rehabilitation. In these tasks, participants typically have distorted perceptual information in the IVE as compared to the real world, in part due to technological limitations such as minimal visual field of view, resolution, latency, and jitter. In an empirical evaluation, we asked the following questions: (i) how do the perceptual differences between virtual and real world affect our ability to accurately reach to the locations of 3D objects, and (ii) how do the motor responses of participants differ between the presence or absence of visual and haptic feedback? We examined factors such as velocity and distance of physical reaching behavior between the real world and IVE, both in the presence or absence of visuo-haptic information. The results suggest that physical reach responses vary systematically between real and virtual environments, especially in situations involving the presence or absence of visuo-haptic feedback. The implications of our study provide a methodological framework for the analysis of reaching motions for selection and manipulation with novel 3D interaction metaphors and to successfully characterize visuo-haptic versus non-visuo-haptic physical reaches in virtual and real-world situations.

The restorative effects of short-term exposure to nature in immersive virtual environments (IVEs) as evidenced by participants' brain activities