Comparing Virtual Reality Tourism to Real-Life Experience: Effects of Presence and Engagement on Attitude and Enjoyment

Within a constructivist paradigm, the virtual reality technology focuses on the learner's actively interactive learning processes and attempts to reduce the gap between the learner’s knowledge and a real-life experience. Recently, virtual reality technologies have been developed for a wide range of applications in education, but further research is needed to establish appropriate and effective learning techniques and practices to motivate meaningful learning. Results showed that perceived self-efficacy and perceived interaction are two crucial factors affecting perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and learning motivation. Furthermore, learning motivation is also a predictor to affect perceived usefulness. After that, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and learning motivation are three important factors affecting learner intention to use the virtual reality learning environment.

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Virtual reality simulation of epi-retinal prosthetic vision highlights the relevance of the visual angle

10.1101/2020.07.18.195800 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jacob Thomas Thorn ◽

Enrico Migliorini ◽

Diego Ghezzi

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Visual Angle ◽

Life Experience ◽

Word Reading ◽

Real Life ◽

Retinal Prosthesis ◽

Optimal Number ◽

Artificial Vision ◽

Retinal Prostheses ◽

Blind Patients

AbstractObjectiveRetinal prostheses hold the potential to restore artificial vision in blind patients suffering from outer retinal dystrophies. The optimal number, density, and coverage of the electrodes that a retinal prosthesis should have to provide adequate artificial vision in daily activities is still an open question and an important design parameter needed to develop better implants.ApproachTo address this question, we investigated the interaction between the visual angle, the pixel number and the pixel density without being limited by a small electrode count, as in previous research reports. We implemented prosthetic vision in a virtual reality environment in order to simulate the real-life experience of using a retinal prosthesis. We designed four different tasks simulating: object recognition, word reading, perception of a descending step and crossing a street.Main resultsThe results of our study showed that in all the tasks the visual angle played the most significant role in improving the performance of the participant.SignificanceThe design of new retinal prostheses should take into account the relevance of the restored visual angle to provide a helpful and valuable visual aid to profoundly or totally blind patients.

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Visualising and experiencing geological flows in Virtual Reality

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8801 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Emmanuel Delage ◽

Benjamin Van Wyk de Vries ◽

Meven Philippe ◽

Susan Conway ◽

Costanza Morino ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Virtual Reality ◽

Life Experience ◽

Real Life ◽

Digital Terrain Model ◽

Flow Simulation ◽

Point Of View ◽

Pyroclastic Flows ◽

Permafrost Degradation ◽

Communication Tool ◽

Debris Slide

Resilience to natural hazards depends on a person's ability to envision an event and its consequences. While real life experience is precious, a real event experience is rare, and sometimes fatal. So, virtual reality provides a way to getting that experience more frequently and without the inconvenience of demise. Virtual reality can also enhance an event to make it more visible, as often things happen in bad weather, at night or in other inconvenient moments.The 3DTeLC software (an output from an ERASMUS+ project, http://3dtelc.lmv.uca.fr/) can handle high-resolution 3D topographic models and the user can study natural hazard phenomena with geological tools in virtual reality. Topography acquired from drone or plane acquisitions, can be made more accessible to researchers, public and stakeholders. In the virtual environment a person can interact with the scene from the first person, drone or plane point of view and can do geological interpretation at different visualization scales. Immersive and interactive visualization is an efficient communication tool (e.g. Tibaldi et al 2019 &#8211; Bulletin of Volcanology DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00445-020-01376-6).We have taken the 3DTeLC workflow and integrated a 2.5D flow simulation programme (VOLCFLOW-C). The dynamic outputs from VOLCFLOW-C are superimposed into a single visualization using a new tool developed from scratch, which we call VRVOLC. This coupled visualization adds dynamic and realistic understanding of events like lahars, lava flows, landslides and pyroclastic flows. We present two examples of this, one developed on the Digital Terrain Model of Chachani Volcano, Arequipa Peru, to assist with flood and lahar visualisation (in conjunction with INGEMMET, UNESCO IGCP project 692 Geoheritage for Resilience and Cap 20-25 Clermont Risk). And another with an Icelandic debris slide that occurred in late 2014 possibly related to permafrost degradation (in conjunction with the ANR PERMOLARDS project).We thank out 3DTeCL colleagues, without which this would not be possible, and acknowledge financial support for the PERMOLARDS project from French National Research Agency (ANR-19-CE01-0010), and this is part of UNESCO IGCP 692 Geoheritage for Resilience.

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