Abstract
Virtual environments will deeply alter the way we conduct scientific studies on human behavior. Possible applications range from spatial navigation over addressing moral dilemmas in a more natural manner to therapeutic applications for affective disorders. The decisive factor for this broad range of applications is that virtual reality (VR) is able to combine a well-controlled experimental environment together with the ecological validity of the immersion of test subjects. Until now, however, programming such an environment in Unity® requires profound knowledge of C# programming, 3D design and computer graphics. In order to give interested research groups access to a realistic VR environment which can easily adapt to the varying needs of experiments, we developed a large, open source, scriptable and modular VR city. It covers an area of 230 hectare, up to 150 self-driving vehicles and 655 active and passive pedestrians and thousands of nature assets to make it both highly dynamic and realistic. Furthermore, the repository presented here contains a stand-alone City AI toolkit for creating avatars and customizing cars. Finally, the package contains code to easily set up VR studies. All main functions are integrated into the graphical user interface of the Unity® Editor to ease the use of the embedded functionalities. In summary, the project named Westdrive is developed to enable research groups to access a state-of-the-art VR environment that is easily adapted to specific needs and allows focus on the respective research question.
Highlights
With the opening of the consumer market in recent years, virtual reality (VR) has penetrated many areas of everyday life: there are e.g., applications for marketing, the games industry and for educational purposes (Anthes et al, 2016; Burke, 2018; Miller, 2018)
Research on human behavior is beginning to take an interest in experiments in virtual reality
Studies based on VR techniques address questions regarding spatial navigation, such as neurological correlations of human navigation (Epstein et al, 2017), as well as gender differences in navigation tasks in a well-controlled environment (Castelli et al, 2008)
Summary
With the opening of the consumer market in recent years, VR has penetrated many areas of everyday life: there are e.g., applications for marketing, the games industry and for educational purposes (Anthes et al, 2016; Burke, 2018; Miller, 2018). Westdrive is developed to eliminate these obstacles in the context of studies on spatial navigation and ethical aspects It shortens the time required for the setup of or the transfer to VR experiments by a considerable magnitude either by enabling researchers to use the project scene directly, or indirectly by letting them use only the provided assets and code. The Westdrive virtual environment is built in Unity R 2018.3.0f2 (64 bit), a game engine platform by Unity R Technologies This engine is used together with a graphical user interface (GUI) called the Unity R editor, which supports 2D and 3D graphics as well as scripting in JavaScript and C# to create dynamic objects inside a simulation.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
