Stereoscopic Views Improve Spatial Presence but not Spatial Learning in VR Games

A key affordance of virtual reality is the capability of immersive VR to prompt spatial presence resulting from the stereoscopic lenses in the head mounted display (HMD). We investigated the effect of a stereoscopic view of a game, Cellverse, on users' perceived spatial presence, knowledge of cells, and learning in three levels of spatial knowledge: route, landmark, and survey knowledge. Fifty-one participants played the game using the same game controllers but with different views; 28 had a stereoscopic view (HMD), and 23 had a non-stereoscopic view (computer monitor). Participants explored a diseased cell for clues to diagnose the disease type and recommend a therapy. We gathered surveys, drawings, and spatial tasks conducted in the game environment to gauge learning. Participants' spatial knowledge of the cell environment and knowledge of cell concepts improved after gameplay in both conditions. Spatial presence scores in the stereoscopic condition were higher than the non-stereoscopic condition with a large effect size, however there was no significant difference in levels of spatial knowledge between the two groups. Most all drawings showed a change in cell knowledge, yet some participants only changed in spatial knowledge of the cell, and some changed in both cell knowledge and spatial knowledge. Evidence suggests that a stereoscopic view has a significant effect on users' experience of spatial presence, but that increased presence does not directly translate into spatial learning.

When will Immersive Virtual Reality have its day? Challenges to IVR adoption in the home as exposed in studies with teenagers, parents and experts

In response to the pandemic, many countries have had multiple lockdowns punctuated by partial freedoms limiting physically being together. In 2020-21, during the COVID-19 pandemic parents were stressed and exhausted by the challenges of work, home schooling and barriers to typical childcare arrangements. Children were missing one another, their social lives and the variety of experiences that the world beyond the home brings. Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) offers tried and tested ways to enable children to maintain beyond-household family activities and dynamics. However, it is not viewed as a solution. Instead, as demonstrated through a multiple method study involving a Rapid Evidence Assessment; workshops with 91 teenagers; interviews with 15 experts; a Delphi study with 21 experts; 402 parent questionnaires pre-pandemic; 232 parent questionnaires during the pandemic; and longitudinal interviews with 13 parents during the first UK lockdown in 2020, IVR is not viewed as having value in the home beyond gaming. Results highlight limited consideration of IVR as a way to enhance family life or the home, with a lack of evidence and direction from current research, innovation and policy. The paper empirically demonstrates that experts, teenagers and parents have limited expectations for VR. Further, with parental resistance to adoption and a lack of ideas or innovations in how Immersive Virtual Reality could be used, the likelihood of VR-headset adoption remains low as does its potential as a means of educating, entertaining and socially engaging children and teenagers.

Can Remote Virtual Simulation Improve Practice-Based Training? – Presence and performance in incident commander education

An incident commander (IC) is expected to take command in any incident to mitigate consequences for humans, property, and the environment. To prepare for this, practice-based training in realistic simulated situations is necessary. Usually this is conducted in live simulation (LS) at dedicated (physical) training grounds or in virtual simulation (VS) situations at training centers, where all participants are present at the same geographical space. COVID-19-induced restrictions on gathering of people motivated the development and use of remote virtual simulation (RVS) solutions. This paper aims to provide an increased understanding of the implementation of RVS in the education of Fire Service ICs in Sweden. Data from observations, questionnaires, and interviews were collected during an RVS examination of two IC classes (43 participants) following an initial pilot study (eight participants). Experienced training values, presence, and performance were investigated. The results indicated that students experienced higher presence in RVS, compared with previous VS studies. This is likely due to the concentration of visual attention to the virtual environment and well-acted verbal counterplay. Although all three training methods (LS, VS, and RVS) are valuable, future research is needed to reveal their respective significant compromises, compared with real-life incidents.

A Spatial Informance Design Method to Elicit Early Interface Prototypes for Augmented Reality

Designing for augmented reality (AR) applications is difficult and expensive. A rapid system for the early design process of spatial interfaces is required. Previous research has used video for mobile AR design, but this is not extensible to head-mounted AR. AR is an emergent technology with no prior design precedent, requiring designers to allow free speculation or risk the pitfalls of ‘path dependence’. In this paper, a participatory elicitation method we call ‘spatial informance design’ is presented. We found combining ‘informance design’, ‘Wizard of Oz’, improvisation, and ‘paper prototyping’, to be a fast and lightweight solution for ideation of rich designs for spatial interfaces. A study using our method with 11 participants, produced similar and wildly different interface configurations and interactions for an augmented reality email application. Based on our findings we propose design implications and an evaluation of our method using spatial informance for the design of head-mounted AR applications.

A Systematic Review of Augmented Reality Applications for Automated Driving: 2009–2020

While augmented reality (AR) interfaces have been researched extensively over the last decades, studies on their application in vehicles have only recently advanced. In this paper, we systematically review 12 years of AR research in the context of automated driving (AD), from 2009 to 2020. Due to the multitude of possibilities for studies with regard to AR technology, at present, the pool of findings is heterogeneous and non-transparent. From a review of the literature we identified N = 156 papers with the goal to analyze the status quo of existing AR studies in AD, and to classify the related literature into application areas. We provide insights into the utilization of AR technology used at different levels of vehicle automation, and for different users (drivers, passengers, pedestrians) and tasks. Results show that most studies focused on safety aspects, driving assistance, and designing non-driving related tasks. AR navigation, trust in automated vehicles (AVs), and interaction experiences also marked a significant portion of the published papers, however a wide range of different parameters was investigated by researchers. Among other things, we find that there is a growing trend toward simulating AR content within virtual driving simulators. We conclude with a discussion of open challenges, and give recommendation for future research in automated driving at the AR side of the reality-virtuality continuum.

The Effects of Steering Locomotion on User Preference and Accuracy in Virtual Environments

Locomotion in virtual environments presents challenges due to the discrepancy between the virtual and the real-world space. Teleportation has been suggested for rapid transit and low cybersickness. However, users often find the method disorienting and difficult over short distances. This is problematic in many gaming scenarios where moderate distances are common. We examined three methods of self-directed, steering locomotion for short to mid-range distances. The methods were pointing, head, and semi-decoupled head and controller. The decoupled method was to explore if game console navigation would be preferred due to familiarity. The experiment focused on user preference and accuracy and had 19 participants. We anticipated that more intuitive methods would be preferred. The pointing method had the greatest impact on accuracy. History of motion sickness susceptibility and prior use of video games did not affect preference with participants favoring the pointing method twice as often over the head method and with none preferring the semi-decoupled method. The pointing method also had lower average illness scores, although not statistically significant. The results suggest that pointing provides an accurate method of locomotion while also being a lower cybersickness option for steering navigation.

Presence and Communication in Hybrid Virtual and Augmented Reality Environments

The use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in connected environments is rarely explored but may become a necessary channel of communication in the future. Such environments would allow multiple users to interact, engage, and share multi-dimensional data across devices and between the spectrum of realities. However, communication between the two realities within a hybrid environment is barely understood. We carried out an experiment with 52 participants in 26 pairs, within two environments of 3D cultural artifacts: 1) a Hybrid VR and AR environment (HVAR) and 2) a Shared VR environment (SVR). We explored the differences in perceived spatial presence, copresence, and social presence between the environments and between users. We demonstrated that greater presence is perceived in SVR when compared with HVAR, and greater spatial presence is perceived for VR users. Social presence is perceived greater for AR users, possibly because they have line of sight of their partners within HVAR. We found positive correlations between shared activity time and perceived social presence. While acquainted pairs reported significantly greater presence than unacquainted pairs in SVR, there were no significant differences in perceived presence between them in HVAR.

A Virtual Reality Embodiment Technique to Enhance Helping Behavior of Police Towards a Victim of Police Racial Aggression

There is an alarming level of violence by police in the US towards African Americans. Although this may be rooted in explicit racial bias, the more intractable problem is overcoming implicit bias, bias that is non-conscious but demonstrated in actual behavior. If bias is implicit it is difficult to change through explicit methods that attempt to change attitudes. We carried out a study using virtual reality (VR) with 38 officers in a US police department, who took part in an interrogation of an African American suspect alongside an officer who was racially abusive towards the suspect. Seventeen of the participants witnessed the interview again from a third person perspective (Observer) and 21 from the embodied perspective of the suspect, now a victim of the interrogation (Victim condition), having been assigned randomly to these two groups. Some weeks later all witnessed aggression by an officer towards an African American man in a virtual cafe scenario. The results show that the actions of those who had been in the Victim condition were coded as being more helpful towards the victim than those in the Observer condition. We argue that such VR exposures operate at the experiential and implicit level rather than the explicit, and hence are more likely to be effective in combating aggression rooted in implicit bias.

A Novel Integrated Information Processing Model of Presence

The objective of this paper is to conduct a narrative literature review on multisensory integration and propose a novel information processing model of presence in virtual reality (VR). The first half of the paper introduces basic multisensory integration (implicit information processing) and the integration of coherent stimuli (explicit information processing) in the physical environment, offering an explanation for people's reactions during VR immersions and is an important component of our model. To help clarify these concepts, examples are provided. The second half of the paper addresses multisensory integration in VR. Three models in the literature examine the role that multisensory integration plays in inducing various perceptual illusions and the relationship between embodiment and presence in VR. However, they do not relate specifically to presence and multisensory integration. We propose a novel model of presence using elements of these models and suggest that implicit and explicit information processing lead to presence. We refer to presence as a perceptual illusion that includes a plausibility illusion (the feeling that the scenario in the virtual environment is actually occurring) and a place illusion (the feeling of being in the place depicted in the virtual environment), based on efficient and congruent multisensory integration.