Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment Research Articles

Collaborative virtual reality environment in disaster medicine: moving from single player to multiple learners.

The use of virtual reality (VR) in healthcare education is on the increase. In disaster medicine, it could be a solution to the cost and logistic constraints for a "full-scale" scenarios. However, VR is mainly designed for single players, which is not appropriate for the objectives pursued in disaster medicine. We decided to evaluate the educational value of using individual VR simulation in disaster medicine on a group of learners. The VR scenario used was a reproduction of a major train crash, with 21 victims and whose objectives were START triage and first aid techniques. The sessions were carried out in multi-participant groups with different roles (active and immersed with headset, paper triage without headset, and active for communications not immersed in the headset). Their perceived self-efficacy was assessed before (T0), after (T1) and 2months (T2) after the training. Satisfaction and confidence in learning were also measured. The median levels of satisfaction and confidence in learning were of 21/25 and 32/40 respectively. Their perceived self-efficacy increased significantly between T0 and T1 (p < 0.001), and remained stable until T2. The different roles of participant showed no difference in terms of satisfaction, confidence in learning or changes in perceived self-efficacy. One third of the participants agreed that the number of participants had interfered with their learning. A significant negative correlation (rS = -0.51, p = 0.002) was found between satisfaction and the fact of having been hindered by the number of participants. Around 90% of participants found the activity entertaining and found the new technologies appropriate for learning technical skills. This first experience of VR in a group setting is satisfactory and shows its positive effects. The limitations highlighted here will enable areas of improvement to be identified for the use of VR in disaster medicine, pending the development of multi-player tools. It would now be appropriate to analyse the impact of this type of simulation on learning and its retention over time.

Collaborative Virtual Reality Real-Time 3D Image Editing for Chest Wall Resections and Reconstruction Planning

The integration of extended reality (XR) technologies into health care procedures presents transformative opportunities, particularly in surgical processes. This study delves into the utilization of virtual reality (VR) for preoperative planning related to chest wall resections in thoracic surgery. Leveraging the capabilities of 3-dimensional (3D) imaging, real-time visualization, and collaborative VR environments, surgeons gain enhanced anatomical insights and can develop predictive surgical strategies. Two clinical cases highlighted the effectiveness of this approach, showcasing the potential for personalized and intricate surgical planning. The setup provides an immersive, dynamic representation of real patient data, enabling collaboration among teams from separate locations. While VR offers enhanced interactive and visualization capabilities, preliminary evidence suggests it may support more refined preoperative strategies, potentially influence postoperative outcomes, and optimize resource management. However, its comparative advantage over traditional methods needs further empirical validation. Emphasizing the potential of XR, this exploration suggests its broad implications in thoracic surgery, especially when dealing with complex cases requiring multidisciplinary collaboration in the immersive virtual space, often referred to as the metaverse. This innovative approach necessitates further examination, marking a shift toward future surgical preparations. In this article, we sought to demonstrate the technique of an immersive real-time volume-rendered collaborative VR-planning tool using exemplary case studies in chest wall surgery.

A collaborative, immersive, virtual reality environment for training electricians

This paper presents the development of a multi-user, collaborative virtual reality environment for training electricians to work on the electric power distribution network. Typically, traditional trainings in this field have lots of constraints and don’t allow learners to experience a wide set of different equipment that is installed in the network nor bad weather conditions and the different risk analysis that should be performed. With the proposed virtual reality environment, learners will be able to practice several realistic conditions without risking themselves.

Learning in immersed collaborative virtual environments: design and implementation

ABSTRACT Immersive virtual environments hold unexplored potential to scaffold and stimulate learning in multiple ways for the purpose of increasing potential learning gains. Yet, the number of implementations in educational settings remains very limited. One reason for limited implementation of immersive virtual environment applications may be a lack of recommendations for their effective design. Building on an extensive theoretical framework, this paper provides such recommendations, specific to immersive educational settings. The recommendations are divided into strategies to optimize cognitive load, foster collaborative learning, leverage platform-specific affordances, mitigate platform-specific limitations and to obtain additional benefits. We illustrate the implementation of these recommendations using a novel collaborative virtual reality environment shown to yield learning gains in two prior studies. Moreover, we detail how a non-invasive and cost-effective feature of automated performance analysis can monitor learning gains in collaborative virtual reality environments. The recommendations based on the example of a collaborative virtual reality environment pave the way for more such implementations to maximize benefits for learners and educators alike.

A collaborative virtual reality environment for liver surgery planning

Surgical planning software is a key component in the treatment of tumor diseases. However, desktop-based systems provide only limited visualization and interaction opportunities. Moreover, collaborative planning among members of a surgical team is only possible to a limited extent. In this work, a collaborative virtual reality (VR) environment to assist liver surgeons in tumor surgery planning is presented. Our aim is to improve virtual resection planning between surgeons in a remote or co-located environment. The system allows surgeons to define and adjust virtual resections on patient-specific organ 3D surfaces and 2D image slices. Changes on both modalities are synchronized, which will enable surgeons to iterate and refine the resection surfaces quickly. In addition, a real-time risk map visualization is presented that displays safety margins around tumors. An evaluation performed by liver surgeons provides information on potential benefits, such as the possibility to visualize complex cases and assessing the safety-critical areas, applicability, and limitations for further improvement.

A web-based collaborative virtual reality environment for distance learning

A web-based collaborative virtual reality environment for distance learning

Active Shooter response training environment for a building evacuation in a collaborative virtual environment

During active shooter events or emergencies, the ability of security personnel to respond appropriately to the situation is driven by pre-existing knowledge and skills, but also depends upon their state of mind and familiarity with similar scenarios. Human behavior becomes unpredictable when it comes to making a decision in emergency situations. The cost and risk of determining these human behavior characteristics in emergency situations is very high. This paper presents an immersive collaborative virtual reality (VR) environment for performing virtual building evacuation drills and active shooter training scenarios using Oculus Rift headmounted displays. The collaborative immersive environment is implemented in Unity 3D and is based on run, hide, and fight mode for emergency response. The immersive collaborative VR environment also offers a unique method for training in emergencies for campus safety. The participant can enter the collaborative VR environment setup on the cloud and participate in the active shooter response training environment, which leads to considerable cost advantages over large-scale real-life exercises. A presence questionnaire in the user study was used to evaluate the effectiveness of our immersive training module. The results show that a majority of users agreed that their sense of presence was increased when using the immersive emergency response training module for a building evacuation environment.

Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment for a Real-time Emergency Evacuation of a Nightclub Disaster

Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment for a Real-time Emergency Evacuation of a Nightclub Disaster

Megacity: A Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment for Emergency Response, Training, and Decision Making

Megacity: A Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment for Emergency Response, Training, and Decision Making

Self-reported sense of presence and responses to social stimuli by adolescents with autism spectrum disorder in a collaborative virtual reality environment

ABSTRACTBackground Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) have the potential to support sociocommunicative interactions for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but little is known about the sense of presence participants feel in CVEs or how CVEs can be used to assess skills.Method Ten children with ASD and 10 typically developing (TD) children (aged 12–16 years) judged greeting behaviours of a human avatar and static facial expressions in a virtual gallery.Results There were no differences in presence reported by the two groups. The ASD group was less sensitive to a negative greeting from the human avatar than the TD group, and impaired in recognising static facial expressions.Conclusions Self-reported measures of presence are valuable for informing which kinds of tasks, and technology may provide more authentic contexts in which to identify and support social competence in participants with ASD.

Model-based generation of personalized full-body 3D avatars from uncalibrated multi-view photographs

According to a number of studies, the use of personalized avatars in virtual environments can enhance the immersion experience of users and the effectiveness of communication between different players. The benefits of using personalized avatars in conjunction with recent technological developments in Virtual Reality (VR) prompted an increasing demand for low-cost systems that are capable of fast and easy generation of personal avatars for use in VR applications. In this paper we present a novel model-based technique that is capable of generating personalized full-body 3D avatars from orthogonal photographs. The proposed method utilizes a statistical model of human 3D shape and a multi-view statistical 2D shape model of its corresponding silhouettes. Our technique is automatic, requiring minimal user intervention, and does not need a calibrated camera. Each component of our proposed technique is extensively evaluated and validated, in an attempt to test the geometric accuracy and identifiability of generated avatars. Furthermore, we demonstrate the use of the proposed method for generating and importing animation-ready avatars in collaborative VR environments.

Learning to work together: Designing a multi-user virtual reality game for social collaboration and perspective-taking for children with autism

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) find it difficult to engage in reciprocal, shared behaviours and technology could be particularly helpful in supporting children’s motivations and skills in this area. Designing educational technologies for children with ASD requires the integration of a complex range of factors including pedagogical and cognitive theories; the affordances of the technology; and the real-world contexts of use. This paper illustrates how these factors informed the design of a novel collaborative virtual reality environment (CVE) for supporting communicative perspective-taking skills for high-functioning children with ASD. Findings from a small-scale study involving eight typically developing (TD) children (aged 8 years) and six children with ASD (verbal mental age 9 years) are also reported. Children with ASD were supported to be reciprocal and collaborative in their responses, suggesting that this CVE could form the basis for a useful technology-based educational intervention.

Knowledge Management for Plant Shutdown in Collaborative Virtual Reality

Oil refineries run nearly continuously twenty-four hours a day. The process of doing routine maintenance, adding or rebuilding refinery process rigs and powering down is referred to as "shutdown". Refineries are extraordinarily complicated and shutdowns are therefore very problematic and expensive. Poorly planned or executed shutdown can result in loss of life and millions of dollars of lost productivity. There is also an important collaborative and knowledge management aspect in that all shutdowns involve many people and are executed by temporary contractors who are often unfamiliar with the details of the plant they are shutting down. Commonly, text and two dimensional drawings are used in preparation for a plant shutdown and exchanging of information. However, with the advent of new technologies it is now possible to also exchange knowledge three dimensionally including multimedia and dynamic files. One technology that enhances the knowledge exchanging and management is Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment (CVRE). CVREs allow users to interact with a computer-simulated environment, be it a real or imagined while using the Internet to collaborate and interact with possibly many other users that may be spread over large distances. Virtual Reality has been widely applied in various forms to plant shutdown planning but the knowledge management aspect of the process is not being addressed by these technologies. In this paper we describe the early use and underlying details of an innovation implantation of a Collaborative Virtual Whiteboard (CVW) inside of an CVRE

Collaborating and learning a second language in a Wireless Virtual Reality Environment

Virtual Reality (VR), a computer-generated 3D space that is multisensorial, interactive and engaging, is today one of the new frontiers in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). VR can be used to promote language learning and practice as it simulates reality, while offering a stimuli-rich environment for language students. The purpose of this paper is twofold: To provide an introduction to VR applications in CALL, and to describe the implementation of a Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment (CVRE) running on a wireless network, which is currently being assessed by Mexican Engineering students for listening comprehension practice of the English language.

Enhancing collaboration in virtual reality applications

We derive a complete component framework for transforming standalone virtual reality (VR) applications into full-fledged multithreaded collaborative virtual reality environments (CVREs), after characterizing existing implementations into a feature-rich superset. Our main contribution is placing over the existing VR tool a very concise and extensible class framework as an add-on component that provides emerging collaboration features. The enhancements include: a scalable arbitrated peer-to-peer topology for scene sharing; multi-threaded components for graphics rendering, user interaction and network communications; a streaming message protocol for client communications; a collaborative user interface model for session handling; and interchangeable user roles with multicamera perspectives, avatar awareness and shared 3D annotations. We validate the framework by converting the existing ALICE VR Navigator into complete CVRE, with experimental results showing good performance in the collaborative inspection and manipulation of complex models.