Immersive Virtual Environment Technology Research Articles

Unraveling the Potential of Immersive Virtual Environments for Behavior Mapping in the Built Environment: A Mapping Review

Introduction/Purpose. Behavior mapping is a crucial practice to capture precise data on human activities. Over the years, technological advancements have improved reliable data collection over the conventional “paper and pen”-based methods. Likewise, researchers increasingly utilize IVE (immersive virtual environment) technology in the built environment for its experiential capabilities. The aim of this research is to comprehensively investigate the most recent research and technological trends, data collection methods, and challenges and opportunities associated with IVE adoption for behavior mapping. Design/Methodology/Approach. This study investigates the current status of behavior mapping in the built environment through a mixed qualitative–quantitative study. A systematic background review was conducted on 353 articles, and a bibliometric analysis was performed on 123 journal articles retrieved from Scopus. The analysis generated science maps, unveiling technological advancements, data types, collection methods, research trends, and potential directions to address the research questions at hand. Findings. A thorough qualitative review presented deeper insight into major transitions and technological contributions, whereas the quantitative study revealed current research trends and future directions. Furthermore, it discussed the contribution, opportunities, and challenges of IVE technology for data collection. Research Limitations. The review and bibliometric study findings are circumscribed by literature data retrieved from Scopus data only, and potential research directions, opportunities, and obstacles are proposed based on analysis of review results, which might cause an incomprehensive nature. Practical Implications. This study highlights the importance of behavioral mapping research and the potential for technology to assist it. The paper also identifies current shortcomings and constraints in the literature, emphasizing the need for interventions in IVE technology.

A novel approach for occupants' horizontal and vertical movement modeling in non-residential buildings using Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE)

• Presented a general framework for the analysis of occupant behavior in IVEs • Established an IVE platform for occupant behavior observational experiments • Investigated occupant's horizontal and vertical movements in buildings respectively • Analyzed and extracted key features and typical patterns for occupant's movement • Built agent-based model to simulate stochastic occupant movement in buildings Occupant's movement in buildings is one of the most essential factors that influence building energy consumption. Understanding the movement of occupants in buildings is crucial for building design and operations. The advances in virtual reality (VR), especially immersive virtual environments (IVEs), offer new and cost-effective alternatives for occupant behavior studies in unbuilt buildings at design phase and establishing controlled experimental scenarios. This paper presents a general framework for the investigation, analysis, and modelling of the horizontal and vertical movements of occupants in buildings using IVE experimental platform. We first established an IVE experimental platform and conduct the experiment in IVE platform to observe occupant horizontal and vertical movement in buildings. The collected experimental data were then used to statistically analyze and extract key features of the occupant's vertical and horizontal movement patterns, based on which a set of agent-based models (ABMs) are built to simulate stochastic occupant's horizontal and vertical movement patterns in buildings. The proposed method can efficiently capture the occupants’ movement patterns, therefore creating more realistic ABMs for simulation. The proposed method provides an efficient approach to utilizing IVE technology for occupant movement pattern observations and modeling horizontal and vertical moving patterns for advanced building design and management.

Helping Others in Virtual Reality Increases Prosocial Self-understanding Among Adolescents.

Reflection on prosocial experiences may be helpful for adolescents highly attentive to their internal states (i.e., high private self-consciousness) to gain prosocial self-knowledge, yet adolescents with low private self-consciousness may not benefit from it. The current study proposed and examined that engaging in helping behavior would be beneficial for those with low private self-consciousness in self-understanding. Two experimental studies using immersive virtual environment technology were conducted to simulate helping situations. A total of 140 middle school students (n = 59, 47.5% female, Mage = 13.98, SD = 0.89, in Study 1; n = 81, 44.4% female, Mage = 15.31, SD = 1.18, in Study 2) completed the experiments. In both studies, adolescents engaging in helping behaviors identified themselves as more prosocial than those who did not engage in helping behaviors. In Study 2, adolescents' positive prosocial self-concept would increase more through engaging in prosocial behavior than by reflecting on past prosocial experiences. Furthermore, adolescents with high private self-consciousness can gain self-understanding both from self-reflection and engaging in prosocial behavior, whereas adolescents with low private self-consciousness benefit only from engaging in prosocial behavior. The findings suggest the need to consider individual differences and adopt appropriate ways of self-understanding when assisting adolescents' prosocial self-formation.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BENDING PATTERN OF LEADING PASSAGES AND FEELING VALUE OF CEILING HEIGHT IN HIGH CEILING ROOM

In this study, we conducted two experiments using immersive virtual environment technology to test the relationship between the shape of the “Leading Passage” and the perceived ceiling height of the “High Ceiling Room”. In order to quantify the amount of psychological height of the ceiling, we implemented a method to adjust the height of the ceiling up or down by the subject’s own manipulation.

The Study of Walking, Walkability and Wellbeing in Immersive Virtual Environments

Recent approaches in the research on walkable environments and wellbeing go beyond correlational analysis to consider the specific characteristics of individuals and their interaction with the immediate environment. Accordingly, a need has been accentuated for new human-centered methods to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying environmental effects on walking and consequently on wellbeing. Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) were suggested as a potential method that can advance this type of research as they offer a unique combination between controlled experimental environments that allow drawing causal conclusions and a high level of environmental realism that supports ecological validity. The current study pilot tested a walking simulator with additional sensor technologies, including biosensors, eye tracking and gait sensors. Results found IVEs to facilitate extremely high tempo-spatial-resolution measurement of physical walking parameters (e.g., speed, number of gaits) along with walking experience and wellbeing (e.g., electrodermal activity, heartrate). This level of resolution is useful in linking specific environmental stimuli to the psychophysiological and behavioral reactions, which cannot be obtained in real-world and self-report research designs. A set of guidelines for implementing IVE technology for research is suggested in order to standardize its use and allow new researchers to engage with this emerging field of research.

Investigating Reflexive Responses to Explicit and Implicit Forms of Social Exclusion Using Immersive Virtual Environment Technology.

Humans are strongly affected by social exclusion, a multifaceted and complex phenomenon of social life. However, individuals tend to respond differently depending on a multitude of individual and contextual factors. Firstly, with a view to increasing the ecological validity and experimental control of an exclusion manipulation in the laboratory setting, we made use of immersive virtual environment technology (IVET; an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset) to create a new exclusion paradigm. Secondly, given that a recent meta-analytic report on reflexive responses (i.e., affect and physiology) to manipulations of exclusion in the laboratory setting cites inconsistencies across findings (Blackhart et al., 2009), we focused on the form of exclusion manipulated to illustrate how this factor may help to explain the divergences in responses. We thus investigated how explicit and implicit forms of social exclusion may have a differential impact on self-reported affect, as well as on electrodermal and cardiovascular activity. Results from this laboratory study conducted with a varied sample of the local population made salient the affordances of IVET as a tool in exclusion research. They also helped to reconcile the conflicting findings in the literature relating to differences in the level of negative affect generated and shed light on physiological arousal in the wake of being excluded in different ways.

Camera Stabilization in 360° Videos and Its Impact on Cyber Sickness, Environmental Perceptions, and Psychophysiological Responses to a Simulated Nature Walk: A Single-Blinded Randomized Trial.

Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) technology has emerged as a valuable tool to environmental psychology research in general, and specifically to studies of human–nature interactions. However, virtual reality is known to induce cyber sickness, which limits its application and highlights the need for scientific strategies to optimize virtual experiences. In this study, we assessed the impact of improved camera stability on cyber sickness, presence, and psychophysiological responses to a simulated nature walk. In a single-blinded trial, 50 participants were assigned to watch, using a head-mounted display, one of two 10-min 360° videos showing a first-person nature walk: one video contained small-magnitude scene oscillations associated with cameraman locomotion, while in the other video, the oscillations were drastically reduced thanks to an electric stabilizer and a dolly. Measurements of cyber sickness (in terms of both occurrence and severity of symptoms), perceptions of the IVE (presence and perceived environmental restorativeness), and indicators of psychophysiological responses [affect, enjoyment, and heart rate (HR)] were collected before and/or after the exposure. Compared to the low-stability (LS) condition, in the high-stability (HS) condition, participants reported lower severity of cyber sickness symptoms. The delta values for pre–post changes in affect for the LS video revealed a deterioration of participants’ affect profile with a significant increase in ratings of negative affect and fatigue, and decrease in ratings of positive affect. In contrast, there were no pre–post changes in affect for the HS video. No differences were found between the HS and LS conditions with respect to presence, perceived environmental restorativeness, enjoyment, and HR. Cyber sickness was significantly correlated with all components of affect and enjoyment, but not with presence, perceived environmental restorativeness, or HR. These findings demonstrate that improved camera stability in 360° videos is crucial to reduce cyber sickness symptoms and negative affective responses in IVE users. The lack of associations between improved stability and presence, perceived environmental restorativeness, and HR suggests that other aspects of IVE technology must be taken into account in order to improve virtual experiences of nature.

Assessing soundscape preferences and the impact of specific sounds on outdoor recreation activities using qualitative data analysis and immersive virtual environment technology

Soundscape ecology is an interdisciplinary field focused, in part, on understanding the relationship between humans and sounds from biological, geophysical, and anthropogenic sources. In this study, we utilized immersive virtual environment technology to identify individuals’ soundscape preferences in parks and protected areas, their emotional perceptions towards these sounds, and the recreational activities they believe would be most impacted by these sounds. Findings from the study were congruent with previous research: There is a clear preference for biophony and geophony and an aversion to anthropophony. Participants also provided insight about the types of activities they found most conducive with individual sounds and soundscapes. We suggest that park and protected area managers take management actions that preserve biophonic and geophonic sounds to improve visitor experiences. We also suggest they educate visitors about the types of sounds they are likely to hear at a specific recreation setting so that visitors experiences are not negatively affected by unmet expectations. Management implicationsPark managers may be able to use the findings presented in this study to:●Mitigate the negative impacts that anthropogenic sounds are likely to have on visitors’ experiences.●Communicate with visitors about the various types of sounds present at recreation settings so visitors have more accurate expectations about possible recreation experiences.●Include information on soundscapes and their impact on recreation experiences in educational materials, allowing visitors to make more informed decisions prior to their visits.

Experiencing Nature through Immersive Virtual Environments: Environmental Perceptions, Physical Engagement, and Affective Responses during a Simulated Nature Walk.

By combining physical activity and exposure to nature, green exercise can provide additional health benefits compared to physical activity alone. Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) have emerged as a potentially valuable supplement to environmental and behavioral research, and might also provide new approaches to green exercise promotion. However, it is unknown to what extent green exercise in IVE can provide psychophysiological responses similar to those experienced in real natural environments. In this study, 26 healthy adults underwent three experimental conditions: nature walk, sitting-IVE, and treadmill-IVE. The nature walk took place on a paved trail along a large river. In the IVE conditions, the participants wore a head-mounted display with headphones reproducing a 360° video and audio of the nature walk, either sitting on a chair or walking on a manually driven treadmill. Measurements included environmental perceptions (presence and perceived environmental restorativeness – PER), physical engagement (walking speed, heart rate, and perceived exertion), and affective responses (enjoyment and affect). Additionally, qualitative information was collected through open-ended questions. The participants rated the IVEs with satisfactory levels of ‘being there’ and ‘sense of reality,’ but also reported discomforts such as ‘flatness,’ ‘movement lag’ and ‘cyber sickness.’ With equivalent heart rate and walking speed, participants reported higher perceived exertion in the IVEs than in the nature walk. The nature walk was associated with high enjoyment and enhanced affect. However, despite equivalent ratings of PER in the nature walk and in the IVEs, the latter were perceived as less enjoyable and gave rise to a poorer affect. Presence and PER did not differ between the two IVEs, although in the treadmill-IVE the negative affective responses had slightly smaller magnitude than in the sitting-IVE. In both the IVEs, the negative affective responses were mainly associated with cyber sickness, whereas PER was positively associated with enjoyment. From the qualitative analysis, it emerged that poor postural control and lack of a holistic sensory experience can also hinder immersion in the IVE. The results indicate that IVE technology might in future be a useful instrument in green exercise research and promotion, but only if image quality and cyber sickness can be addressed.

Framework for Virtual Cognitive Experiment in Virtual Geographic Environments

Virtual Geographic Environment Cognition is the attempt to understand the human cognition of surface features, geographic processes, and human behaviour, as well as their relationships in the real world. From the perspective of human cognition behaviour analysis and simulation, previous work in Virtual Geographic Environments (VGEs) has focused mostly on representing and simulating the real world to create an ‘interpretive’ virtual world and improve an individual’s active cognition. In terms of reactive cognition, building a user ‘evaluative’ environment in a complex virtual experiment is a necessary yet challenging task. This paper discusses the outlook of VGEs and proposes a framework for virtual cognitive experiments. The framework not only employs immersive virtual environment technology to create a realistic virtual world but also involves a responsive mechanism to record the user’s cognitive activities during the experiment. Based on the framework, this paper presents two potential implementation methods: first, training a deep learning model with several hundred thousand street view images scored by online volunteers, with further analysis of which visual factors produce a sense of safety for the individual, and second, creating an immersive virtual environment and Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based experimental paradigm to both record and analyse the brain activity of a user and explore what type of virtual environment is more suitable and comfortable. Finally, we present some preliminary findings based on the first method.

Does perception of authenticity attract visitors to agricultural settings?

ABSTRACTIn the context of social and cultural relativity, there has been ample discussion about the fluidity and complexity of authenticity. This debate, termed ‘dilemma of authenticity’, centres around conflicting stances among tourism theorists, practitioners, marketers, and host communities with regards to how authenticity is perceived and how it influences tourists’ decision-making. This uncertainty has hindered agritourism entrepreneurs who remain unsure of how they may rely on authenticity to attract tourists. This paper examines perceptions of authenticity in working agricultural landscapes through two between-subject experiments to investigate how appealing the self-expressed authentic agricultural elements appear to potential tourists. One experiment was carried out in a controlled laboratory experiment employing Immersive Virtual Environment technology, and the second via a web-based survey using two-dimensional photos. Participants were undergraduate students and Amazon Mechanical Turk Master Workers, respectively. The results suggest that participants identify productive elements of agricultural landscapes as both authentic and appealing, though significantly differing in regards to socio-cultural elements. The triangulation of methods and samples reveal discrepant findings for wooded and riparian areas. This paper brings about novel findings about the perception of authenticity and appeal in agricultural settings.

Immersive Virtual Environment Technology to Supplement Environmental Perception, Preference and Behavior Research: A Review with Applications.

Immersive virtual environment (IVE) technology offers a wide range of potential benefits to research focused on understanding how individuals perceive and respond to built and natural environments. In an effort to broaden awareness and use of IVE technology in perception, preference and behavior research, this review paper describes how IVE technology can be used to complement more traditional methods commonly applied in public health research. The paper also describes a relatively simple workflow for creating and displaying 360° virtual environments of built and natural settings and presents two freely-available and customizable applications that scientists from a variety of disciplines, including public health, can use to advance their research into human preferences, perceptions and behaviors related to built and natural settings.

Studying social interactions through immersive virtual environment technology: virtues, pitfalls, and future challenges.

The goal of the present review is to explain how immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) can be used for the study of social interactions and how the use of virtual humans in immersive virtual environments can advance research and application in many different fields. Researchers studying individual differences in social interactions are typically interested in keeping the behavior and the appearance of the interaction partner constant across participants. With IVET researchers have full control over the interaction partners, can standardize them while still keeping the simulation realistic. Virtual simulations are valid: growing evidence shows that indeed studies conducted with IVET can replicate some well-known findings of social psychology. Moreover, IVET allows researchers to subtly manipulate characteristics of the environment (e.g., visual cues to prime participants) or of the social partner (e.g., his/her race) to investigate their influences on participants’ behavior and cognition. Furthermore, manipulations that would be difficult or impossible in real life (e.g., changing participants’ height) can be easily obtained with IVET. Beside the advantages for theoretical research, we explore the most recent training and clinical applications of IVET, its integration with other technologies (e.g., social sensing) and future challenges for researchers (e.g., making the communication between virtual humans and participants smoother).

HIV‐related stigma in social interactions: Approach and avoidance behaviour in a virtual environment

AbstractPeople living with HIV are a stigmatized group in our society, especially homosexual people living with HIV. One of the behavioural manifestations of stigmatization is an increased interpersonal distance kept during social interactions. Immersive virtual environment technology enables the experimental study of social interactions in an accurate and relatively unobtrusive manner. Using a virtual hospital room, we measured to what extent diagnosis (HIV, cancer or broken leg) and sexual orientation (homosexual or heterosexual) were related to approach behaviour (based on the interpersonal distance and the speed of approach), and the degree patients were looked at (as was obtained from an additional exploration of our head orientation data). Moreover, implicit and explicit attitudes were predicted to moderate this relationship. Participants (N = 50) were healthy, heterosexual students. A main effect of diagnosis revealed larger interpersonal distances from patients with HIV than from patients with cancer. Also, an interaction effect demonstrated that distances were largest when the HIV patient was homosexual. Furthermore, a main effect of diagnosis showed that HIV and cancer patients were approached more slowly than broken leg patients, an effect that was larger for HIV than for cancer patients. In addition, head orientation analyses revealed that patients with HIV were relatively ‘looked at’ more often as well as relatively ‘looked away from’ less often than patients with cancer and patients with a broken leg. None of these effects however were found to be moderated by implicit and explicit attitudes. These findings provide behavioural evidence for the stigmatization of people living with HIV and homosexuals with HIV in particular. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Are Virtual Environments the New Frontier in Obesity Management?

AbstractAdvances in virtual environment technology, particularly digital immersive virtual environment technology, enable people to engage in increasingly compelling experiences. Such technology not only has entertainment value but also provides a powerful research platform for behavioral scientists and clinicians. Although many immersive virtual environment‐based studies have been conducted in the last 20 years, investigations of psychological and physical health remain relatively rare. In short, virtual environment technology provides investigators and health care providers with a powerful tool to study motivate their research participants and patients to improve or regain health. Here, the nature of the technology, ideas for future research using it, and how it has and can be used to assess and combat the obesity epidemic sweeping the United States.

The Impact of Vivid Messages on Reducing Energy Consumption Related to Hot Water Use

Research suggests that vivid and personalized interventions influence proenvironmental attitudes and behaviors. Through the use of immersive virtual environment technology, people can experience vivid environmental scenarios that are personalized to the individual. An experiment was conducted to investigate the impact of vivid and/or personal messages on energy savings behavior related to hot water use. Participants experienced a virtual shower in which they received feedback (varying in vividness and/or personalization) on the amount of energy used to heat and transport the virtual water. Participants’ hot water use during hand washing in the physical world was tracked before and after treatment. Participants exposed to vivid messages used cooler water compared with not vivid messages. There was no significant effect for personal messages and no interaction effect. The results suggest that technology that leverages vividness may be effective in promoting proenvironmental behaviors.

The Effect of Embodied Experiences on Self-Other Merging, Attitude, and Helping Behavior

Immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) provides users with vivid sensory information that allow them to embody another person's perceptual experiences. Three experiments explored whether embodied experiences via IVET would elicit greater self-other merging, favorable attitudes, and helping toward persons with disabilities compared to traditional perspective taking, which relies on imagination to put the self in another person's shoes. Trait dispositions to feel concern for others was tested as a moderating variable. Participants in the embodied experiences (EE) condition were exposed to a red-green colorblind simulation using IVET while participants in the perspective taking (PT) condition were exposed to a normal colored IVET world and instructed to imagine being colorblind. Experiment 1 compared EE against PT and found that EE was effective for participants with lower tendencies to feel concern for others 24 hours after treatment. Experiment 2 delved further into the underlying process of EE and confirmed that a heightened sense of realism during the EE led to greater self-other merging compared to PT. Finally, Experiment 3 demonstrated that the effect of EE transferred into the physical world, leading participants to voluntarily spend twice as much effort to help persons with colorblindness compared to participants who had only imagined being colorblind.

Sociality of facial expressions in immersive virtual environments: A facial EMG study

Immersive virtual environment technology is increasingly used by psychologists as a tool for researching social influence in realistic, yet experimentally controllable, settings. The present study demonstrates the validity and reliability of facial electromyography as a marker of affect in immersive virtual environments and further shows that the mere presence of virtual humans is enough to elicit sociality effects on facial expressiveness. Participants viewed pleasant and unpleasant images in a virtual room either alone or with two virtual humans present. The patterns of smiling and frowning activity elicited by positive and negative stimuli in the virtual environment were the same as those found in laboratory settings. Moreover, when viewing positive stimuli, smiling activity was greater when two agents were present than in the alone condition. The results provide new psychophysiological evidence for the potency of social agents in immersive virtual environments.

Employing immersive virtual environments for innovative experiments in health care communication

Objective This report reviews the literature for studies that employ immersive virtual environment technology methods to conduct experimental studies in health care communication. Advantages and challenges of using these tools for research in this area are also discussed. Methods A literature search was conducted using the Scopus database. Results were hand searched to identify the body of studies, conducted since 1995, that are related to the report objective. Results The review identified four relevant studies that stem from two unique projects. One project focused on the impact of a clinician's characteristics and behavior on health care communication, the other focused on the characteristics of the patient. Both projects illustrate key methodological advantages conferred by immersive virtual environments, including, ability to maintain simultaneously high experimental control and realism, ability to manipulate variables in new ways, and unique behavioral measurement opportunities. Conclusion Though implementation challenges exist for immersive virtual environment-based research methods, given the technology's unique capabilities, benefits can outweigh the costs in many instances. Practice implications Immersive virtual environments may therefore prove an important addition to the array of tools available for advancing our understanding of communication in health care.

The effects of immersion and navigation on the acquisition of spatial knowledge of abstract data networks

Abstract With increasing frequency immersive virtual environments (IVEs) are being used to present multi-dimensional information visualizations. Networks and graphs are a common type of abstract data; in order to understand the varied relationships between entities in a network, it is crucial to acquire some spatial knowledge about the layout and connectivity of its components. While there is a good body of evidence for the benefits of IVE displays, most work on the effects of immersion and of navigation on the acquisition of spatial knowledge has been concerned with wayfinding in realistic environments; much less is known about how to leverage IVE technology to benefit a user’ss spatial understanding of (abstract) data networks. In this paper we present an empirical study designed to determine what effect level of immersion and navigation technique can have on a user’s acquisition of spatial knowledge of network data, specifically cell signaling pathways. For this CAVE study (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment), the level of immersion is controlled by changing the Field-Of-Regard, while we also vary navigation between one egocentric and one exocentric technique. The results show that both immersion and navigation technique can affect the acquisition of spatial knowledge regarding abstract networks in an immersive virtual environment.