Protein Visualization Software in the Metaverse

INTRODUCTION: Nowadays, it is inevitable not to question the relationships and influences of digital technologies (Virtual Reality – VR) in education and teaching practices, as well as the positioning and conditions of educational institutions and teachers in this new socio-cultural context. This project emphasizes the importance of considering scientific collaboration through a new approach that addresses the necessity and potential of using virtual environments in the metaverse for scientific purposes, specifically in the visualization of proteins. OBJECTIVES: The objective was to develop a virtual environment featuring amino acids and proteins in Virtual Reality (VR) within the metaverse for use in the teaching-learning process in health-related courses. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Molecules were obtained via Protein Data Bank® and/or modeled using open-source software such as Blender® and Chimera®, converting "PDB" files into ".FBX" models. The system was developed using Unreal Engine from Epic Games® with programming in Blueprint® and virtual visualization through Meta Quest® 2 and 3. DISCUSSION AND RESULTS: Three environments were created, including 20 amino acids, 5 peptides (vasopressin, oxytocin, angiotensin II, glutathione, and bradykinin), and 3 proteins (5MDA, 2C0K, and 1E88), complemented by panels and ambient sounds in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. The system prototype was tested by Pharmacy and Biochemistry students at the Campus Centro-Oeste (CCO/UFSJ) and received high praise, particularly for 3D molecule observation and distinguishing amino acid side chains based on acidity, polarity, and other characteristics. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, this project highlights the important role of Virtual Reality (VR) in education by creating a virtual environment within the metaverse for health-related courses. The system demonstrated significant potential as an educational tool, effectively enhancing the visualization of molecular structures to understand its influence in their chemical properties.

The use of virtual reality (VR) technology to induce emotional responses has recently become more common in psychological studies. The majority of these studies have been restricted to seated VR experiences where the participant remains in a sedentary position. The purpose of the current thesis is to utilise room-scale VR to increase presence, agency and potency of virtual environments (VE) designed to induce embodied emotional responses. The Evaluative Space Model (ESM) [Cacciopio et. al 2012] was used as the theoretical basis for this programme of research, which was particularly concerned with avoidance responses to negative stimuli, perception of threat and negativity bias. A number of unique VEs were created using Unreal Engine 4 designed to create an illusion of height and the potential for a virtual fall as a source of threat. These VEs were supplemented by additional tracking sensors and an integrated approach to data collection wherein behavioural interactions and movements within the VE were synchronised with ambulatory methods from psychophysiology, e.g. facial electromyography (fEMG), skin conductance level (SCL). The first study (N=20) utilised a VE that requires participants to walk on a wooden plank between the rooftops of two buildings, two versions of the VE were created: sedentary version operated via gamepad controller and a room scale version with natural sensorimotor mappings. The study revealed greater psychophysiological reactivity for the room-scale version of the environment. The second study (N=34) introduced an elaborated room-scale VE where participants must traverse a grid of translucent ice blocks suspended at height in order to reach an end-goal within a physical space of 9m2. This grid contained three types of ice block: solid (low-threat), crack (mid-threat) or fall (high threat). The number of crack and fall blocks were increased over three levels of the VE in order to manipulate threat. The foot movements of participants were tracked as the primary mode of interaction with the VE. The study revealed: (i) higher incidence of risk-averse behaviours as threat increased, (ii) this pattern of behaviour was enhanced for participants with higher levels of trait neuroticism, and (iii) greater reactivity from the corrugator muscle in the period following a two-feet movement. The third study (N=20) represented an extension of study two where a significantly larger version of the ice block VE was created in a physical space of 27m2. In this experiment, the level of threat (i.e. number of crack and fall blocks) was increased, sustained and decreased in order to study adaptation to reduced threat level. In addition, a ‘ground level’ version of the VE was utilised as a control to study the effect of virtual height in isolation. The results of this study revealed: (i) participants adjusted behaviour to increased threat and decreased threat, but only in the presence of virtual height, and (ii) increased activation of zygomaticus during interactions with crack blocks, which suggests this muscle may be associated with a ‘grimace’ response in this context. The final experimental chapter represents a re-analyses of the data from studies 2 and 3 designed to explore individual differences as predictors of risk averse behaviour in response to the threat. These analyses identified trait neuroticism and age as traits that significantly influenced the magnitude of the negativity gradient in response to threat. The implications of the research for studying emotional experiences in VR are discussed.

User Experience and Engagement in the Reality–Virtuality Continuum: A Special Issue Guest Editorial

Mining is one of the fastest growing solid mining industries worldwide. The intensification of production processes and increased economic efficiency by reducing costs and increasing production volumes, enhanced the intensive development in the use of modern, innovative technologies. Mixed reality technologies with the emphasis on creating the most natural interface, which could not be realized for a long time, are successfully being introduced into the production processes of the mining industry.The company SoftCATEN has developed a software package for the dynamic construction of underground mine workings with visualization in virtual reality. The principles of project implementation based on Unreal Engine 4 are developed. The proposed technology for constructing a coal mine model provides the conditions for a high-quality change in approaches to training processes and provides mining enterprises with tools for a full analysis of possible options for the development of mining operations.

Unreal Engine has emerged as a leading platform for virtual reality (VR) development, offering advanced tools to enhance immersive virtual environments and user interaction. This study examines the key technological features of Unreal Engine that contribute to realism and interactivity in VR, focusing on real-time rendering, photorealistic graphics, and precise physical responsiveness. Adopting a technical analysis approach, this research evaluates the impact of key technologies, including hand tracking, real-time ray tracing, and in-camera visual effects (ICVFX), on interaction fidelity and visual realism. The findings indicate that hand tracking enables natural, gesture-based interactions without the need for external controllers, while real-time ray tracing significantly improves lighting accuracy, thereby enhancing the overall visual fidelity. Additionally, 3D spatial audio refines auditory perception by providing accurate sound directionality and depth, further augmenting user immersion. ICVFX facilitates the seamless integration of live-action footage with virtual environments, expanding the potential for realistic storytelling in VR animation and virtual production. In conclusion, despite the complexity of Unreal Engine’s interface, the VR template system and OpenXR support simplify development and enhance cross-platform compatibility. The study highlights Unreal Engine’s scalability for large-scale VR projects and its transformative potential across industries such as gaming, simulation, education, and virtual production. The practical implications suggest that leveraging Unreal Engine’s capabilities can lead to more immersive, interactive, and efficient VR content creation, paving the way for future advancements in virtual experience design.

Feasibility, accuracy, and reproducibility of device sizing in virtual reality for percutaneous left atrial appendage closure - a single center study

With the advancing technology in the field of immersive reality, bringing the whole world closer is getting easier. For projects that involve multiple stakeholders, the IDIVE (Immersive Design in Virtual Reality) is a system in which a complex CAD model is placed in a virtual environment, which helps one understand the requirement gathering of the displayed model’s nature and its objective. The impact of using extended reality in early design reviews is that it supports accelerated iterations, quick testing, informed decision-making, simulations, and cost savings. This enables designers to assess various aspects of the design’s functionality and performance in the early stage of the project. We also represent a toolchain for developing a virtual environment using a game engine – Unreal Engine. The method briefly describes the basic principles and best practices for the development of a suitable location-based virtual environment for the model from initial study to implementation. Stakeholders can utilize a head-mounted device, allowing them to immerse themselves in the virtual environment, enabling each person to form their unique assessment of its merits and shortcomings. We ran a pilot study among homogeneous graduate students, this paper describes the existing tools and capabilities for each of these steps and highlights instances where further toolchain development is necessary to produce a useful design environment for distributed collaboration through an immersive design virtual environment.

Virtual reality stroke rehabilitation - hype or hope?

2D Shopping site can only provide people with simple pictures and text messages without interaction and sense of reality.This paper argues how to solve these problems through 3D mall for it will become the future development trend of online shopping.In DVR(distributed virtual reality system) virtual environment virtual environment, the different position of multiple users can interact with the collaborative operation.From three perspectives of building a 3D model, designing an interaction function and creating a website, this paper puts forward a scheme of construction for 3D mall system under the environment of DVR By studying a necessity of the 3D mall。 According to a report which is issued in 2014 Q1 by IT research center of China, we can easily find out that online users have more than 310 million people and online shopping markets scale reaches up to 456.44 billion yuan.It is increased 27.6% than a year ago as shown in figure 1. Obviously, shopping on line has become a new way of consumption。

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Recent advances in Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) or drone technologies has resulted in their widespread use in a number of civilian applications, such as aerial imaging, infrastructure inspection, precision agriculture, among others. While this technology is accessible for everyone, it still requires a highly skilled operator to be able to successfully operate these drones in a safe and efficient manner. At the same time, developments in Virtual/Augmented Reality (V/AR) technologies present opportunities for combining the two into novel applications and use cases by providing an intuitive interface for interacting with the drones - opening up possibilities for safe and effective use of drones by relatively untrained operators. This effort addresses the development and implementation of an interface that provides an operator wearing an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset interfaced with a Leap Motion controller the ability to control drones in a virtual reality environment and translate the commands to a physical implementation, in a motion capture volume. This includes actions such as selecting drones, take-off and landing, and commanding the drones to fly a pre-defined flight pattern. DroneKit-Python was used to communicate commands to drones while OptiTrack motion capture cameras and the NatNet SDK (both provided by Naturalpoint Inc.) combine to provide the precise physical location of each drone in an indoor laboratory setting. Unreal Engine 4 was used as the development platform to create the virtual scene the operator resides in. A QAV250 quadcopter from Lumenier Labs was used as the UAS platform, with a Pixhawk flight controller, interfaced with a Raspberry Pi 3 Single Board Computer (SBC) as the companion computer.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">In this effort, the virtual environment was created and successfully integrated with the motion capture system. In addition, the QAV 250 quadcopter was successfully controlled through the operator interface in the VR environment and take-offs and flights along pre-defined flight paths (triangles) were successfully achieved. Further tests are planned to increase user interaction and achieve more complex flight paths.</div></div>

Extended-Reality Technologies: An Overview of Emerging Applications in Medical Education and Clinical Care.

Three-dimensional imaging is at the core of medical imaging and is becoming a standard in biological research. As a result, there is an increasing need to visualize, analyze and interact with data in a natural three-dimensional context. By combining stereoscopy and motion tracking, commercial virtual reality (VR) headsets provide a solution to this critical visualization challenge by allowing users to view volumetric image stacks in a highly intuitive fashion. While optimizing the visualization and interaction process in VR remains an active topic, one of the most pressing issue is how to utilize VR for annotation and analysis of data. Annotating data is often a required step for training machine learning algorithms. For example, enhancing the ability to annotate complex three-dimensional data in biological research as newly acquired data may come in limited quantities. Similarly, medical data annotation is often time-consuming and requires expert knowledge to identify structures of interest correctly. Moreover, simultaneous data analysis and visualization in VR is computationally demanding. Here, we introduce a new procedure to visualize, interact, annotate and analyze data by combining VR with cloud computing. VR is leveraged to provide natural interactions with volumetric representations of experimental imaging data. In parallel, cloud computing performs costly computations to accelerate the data annotation with minimal input required from the user. We demonstrate multiple proof-of-concept applications of our approach on volumetric fluorescent microscopy images of mouse neurons and tumor or organ annotations in medical images.

This project aimed to investigate the correlation between virtual reality (VR) imagery and ambisonic sound. With the increasing popularity of VR applications, understanding how sound is perceived in virtual environments is crucial for enhancing the immersiveness of the experience. In the experiment, participants were immersed in a virtual environment that replicated a concert hall. Their task was to assess the correspondence between sound scenes (which differed in reverberation times and their characteristics) and the observed invariant visual scene. The research was conducted using paired tests. Participants were asked to identify the sound scene they considered more closely matched the concert hall seen in the VR goggles for each pair. Each sound scene differed in the employed impulse response. All the impulse responses were recorded in real venues such as concert halls, auditoriums, churches, etc. To provide a realistic auditory experience, the sound scenes were processed using third-order ambisonics and decoded using binaural techniques with HRTFs. The virtual concert hall was generated using the Unreal Engine and was the same for all the tests. One of the major conclusions drawn from the conducted research was confirming the role of spatial sound in creating immersive VR experiences. The study demonstrated that appropriately matching spatial sound to the VR visual scene is essential for achieving complete immersion. Additionally, expectations and preferences regarding reverberation characteristics in different types of spaces were discovered. These findings have significant implications for the design of virtual environments, and understanding these aspects can contribute to improving VR technology and creating more immersive and realistic virtual experiences for users.

Because of its benefits in providing an engaging and mobile environment, virtual reality (VR) has recently been rapidly adopted and integrated in education and professional training. Augmented reality (AR) is the integration of VR with the real world, where the real world provides context and the virtual world provides or reconstructs missing information. Mixed reality (MR) is the blending of virtual and physical reality environments allowing users to interact with both digital and physical objects at the same time. In recent years, technology for creating reality-based 3D models has advanced and spread across a diverse range of applications and research fields. The purpose of this paper is to design, develop, and test VR for kinaesthetic distance learning in a museum setting. A VR training program has been developed in which learners can select and perform pre-made scenarios in a virtual environment. The interaction in the program is based on kinaesthetic learning characteristics. Scenarios with VR controls simulate physical interaction with objects in a virtual environment for learners. Learners can grasp and lift objects to complete scenario tasks. There are also simulated devices in the virtual environment that learners can use to perform various actions. The study’s goal was to compare the effectiveness of the developed VR educational program to that of other types of educational material. Our innovation is the development of a system for combining their 3D visuals with rendering capable of providing a mobile VR experience for effective heritage enhancement.

With advancements in virtual reality (VR) technology, many fields have adopted this technology as an alternative means to assess human responses to specific environments without needing to replicate them in the real world. This includes the study of indoor lighting environments. Especially for some advanced window systems that are still at the lab stage, human perception and acceptance of these innovative window systems, which feature dynamic transmittance and colour tinting, could be evaluated using immersive VR modelling. This can be done before the commercial products are applied in practice, potentially improving indoor daylighting quality and reducing the risk of visual discomfort. However, limited research has validated whether VR technology can accurately reproduce and present a realistic indoor daylighting environment to users, with user feedback closely mirroring that in reality. To address this issue, a pilot randomized crossover study design was implemented to compare and analyse the subjective (e.g., satisfaction level, sense of presence) and objective (task performance) responses of 14 participants in both virtual environments built by Unreal Engine 5 and physical environments in a University library seminar room. The results indicated that 1) no significant differences (p>0.05) in the majority of items between the VR and real environments, which means that the participants were able to achieve a sufficient sense of presence in the virtual environment. 2) Although there were minor items that showed slight deviations and dissatisfaction, these were generally attributed to the relatively low definition and limited resolution of the VR headsets used. Nonetheless, the conclusion can be drawn that the virtual environment can provide an adequate representation of the physical daylit environment, with user responses being reliable. Based on this validation of VR modelling methods, the perception of indoor daylighting with different dynamic smart windows could be further developed in the future.