Non-immersive Environment Research Articles

Evaluating how psychological senses and physical motions are affected by avatar shapes in a non-immersive environment

Evaluating how psychological senses and physical motions are affected by avatar shapes in a non-immersive environment

The influence of cross-language similarity and transparency on idiom knowledge in non-immersed L2 speakers

Idioms are frequently used by native speakers but pose challenges for L2 learners. In this study, we aimed to identify the key psycholinguistic properties that predict L2 idiom knowledge among non-immersed speakers. A total of 53 Chilean L2 English speakers participated in an online idiom knowledge test, requiring them to recognize the figurative meanings of 99 English idioms and rate their transparency. The results showed that cross-language similarity and transparency, in conjunction with familiarity, significantly predicted L2 idiom knowledge. Conversely, literal plausibility, decomposability, frequency, and predictability did not significantly impact L2 idiom knowledge. Our findings support the Parasitic Hypothesis of vocabulary development and suggest that non-immersed L2 learners heavily rely on their L1 lexical and conceptual networks. The study underscores the importance of semantic transparency and cross-language similarity in L2 idiom acquisition, particularly for learners in non-immersive environments. Our findings advocate for a proficiency-tailored ESL instruction approach. Initially, focus on teaching transparent idioms and those similar to the learners' native language for better comprehension and retention. As proficiency increases, gradually introduce idioms without cross-language parallels to enhance comprehensive linguistic mastery. This approach offers practical insights for language education and applied linguistics.

Meta‐analyses of anxiety, motivation, performance, satisfaction, and self‐efficacy in virtual reality‐assisted language education

AbstractThe popularity of virtual reality (VR) technologies has increased since the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic. However, there is a paucity of meta‐analytic studies that have investigated the use of VR technologies in language education. This current study addresses this gap by conducting a systematic analysis of 41 randomized controlled studies conducted between 2008 and 2021, examining the effects of VR technologies on language educational outcomes. The findings indicate that VR technologies reduce anxiety levels while enhancing motivation, performance, satisfaction, and self‐efficacy in language learning when compared to traditional learning methods. These outcomes are observed regardless of whether learners engage with immersive or nonimmersive environments and whether they use head‐mounted displays or nonhead‐mounted displays. Future research can investigate the impact of VR on intercultural communicative competence and collaborative problem‐solving abilities.

IMMERSIVE GAZE SHARING FOR ENHANCING COMMUNICATION IN DESIGN EDUCATION: AN INITIAL USER STUDY IN THE CONTEXT OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN CRITIQUES

AbstractGaze sharing is an emerging technology which can enhance human communication and collaboration. As such, it is expected to play an important role in future educational practices. To date, its application was not explored in the context of design education. Additionally, it was mainly implemented in non-immersive environments, which are limited in their potential for engaging learners. Acknowledging the growing interest in immersive learning, as well as the promise made by gaze sharing technology, we strive to develop an immersive gaze sharing environment, to support design education. As a first step, we have implemented and tested an immersive gaze sharing system for supporting design learners. The system was then tested by focusing on a scenario of architectural design, with the aim of collecting valuable user feedback regarding its usability and potential. Our initial user study informs developers of such systems regarding potential issues that may be encountered during deployment in a real-world setting and proposes concrete ways to address these. These insights can help to pave the way for integrating gaze sharing system into design education practices in the near future.

On the application of extended reality technologies for the evaluation of product characteristics during the initial stages of the product development process

Fast-growing global markets are forcing companies to continuously re-assess customer needs when designing new products. Product evaluation is a critical task to ensure success, but it can require significant financial and time investments. From an end-user standpoint, consumers must also evaluate multiple design options before purchasing a product, which is often a complex process, especially in online environments where traditional formats coexist with more sophisticated media. Modern extended reality technologies have become an effective tool for product assessment in professional design environments as well as a powerful mechanism for consumers during decision making activities. However, the modality used to view and evaluate the product may affect the perceptual response and thus the user’s overall evaluation. In this paper, we examine the influence of visual media in product assessment using different designs of a particular product typology. We discuss two studies where a group of participants used the semantic differential technique to evaluate four chair designs displayed in three different media. In our first study, participants used simultaneous evaluation to assess the products as presented in photographs, a non-immersive environment, and an Augmented Reality (AR) experience. In the second study, participants evaluated the product separately as viewed in non-photorealistic rendering, AR, and virtual reality (VR). We used the “Aligned Rank Transform” proceedings to find differences between groups for the semantic scales, the overall evaluation, the purchasing decision, and the response confidence. Our results show that visual media influences product perception. Certain characteristics in Jordan's physio-pleasure category are particularly significant as perceptual differences are more pronounced. Immersive media can highlight some product attributes and a joint evaluation can help minimize these differences.

Data visualization of crime data using immersive virtual reality

Visualization explores quantitative content of data with human intuition and plays an integral part in the data mining process. When the data is big there are different analysis methods and approaches used to find inherent patterns and relationships. However, sometimes a human in loop intervention is needed to find new connections and relationships that the existing algorithms cannot provide. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) provides the “sense of presence” and gives the ability to discover new connections and relationships by visual inspection. The goal of this work is to investigate the merging of immersive VR and data science for advanced visualization. VR and immersive visualization involve interplay between novel technology and human perception to generate insight into both. We propose to use immersive VR for exploring the higher dimensionality and abstraction that are associated with big data. VR can use an abstract representation of high-dimensional data in support of advanced scientific visualization. This paper demonstrates the data visualization tool with real-time feed of Baltimore crime data in immersive environment, non-immersive environment, and mobile environment. We have combined virtual reality interaction techniques and 3D geographical information representation to enhance the visualization of situational impacts as shown in Figure 1. The data visualization tool is developed using the Unity gaming engine. We have presented bar graphs with oculus controller to combine the bar chart visualization with a zooming feature that allows users to view the details more effectively. The Oculus Touch headset allows the users to navigate and experience the environment with full immersion. Oculus Touch controllers also give haptic feedback to the user when using objects such as laser pointer. We are interested in extending our VR data visualization tools to enable collaborative, multi-user data exploration and to explore the impact of VR on collaborative analytics tasks, in comparison with traditional 2D visualizations. The benefits of our proposed work include providing a data visualization tool for immersive visualization and visual analysis. We also suggest key features that immersive analytics can provide with situational awareness and in loop human intervention for decision making.

Stationary walking performance of post-stroke patients and healthy individuals in real and virtual non-immersive environments

BACKGROUND: Several therapies are being used for the rehabilitation of stroke patients, such as Virtual Reality (VR) which has emerged as an interactive intervention to motivate and rehabilitate post-stroke patients. However, data comparison between the virtual and real environments is inconclusive. Thus, this study aimed to compare the kinematics and performance of the affected lower limb of post-stroke patients and healthy individuals during stationary walking activity between the real and virtual non-immersive environments. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 10 stroke patients and 10 healthy individuals, matched for gender and age. The participants performed stationary walking in a real and non-immersive virtual environment (Wii Fit Plus® –Running mode) for 3 minutes in random order. The performance was measured in both environments using the number of steps, while the kinematics was assessed by calculating the mean maximum flexion and extension of each joint (hip, knee, and ankle) of the affected lower limb. RESULTS: Post-stroke patients performed a higher total number of steps (p = 0.042), mainly in the third minute (p = 0.011), less knee flexion (p = 0.001) and total knee range of motion (p = 0.001) in the virtual compared with the real environment. CONCLUSIONS: Post-stroke patients performed more steps, with a faster cadence and smaller knee range of motion on the affected side in non-immersive virtual environment compared with the real environment.

Situational Awareness of COVID Pandemie data using Virtual Reality

Situational awareness provides the decision making capability to identify, process, and comprehend big data. In our approach, situational awareness is achieved by integrating and analyzing multiple aspects of data using stacked bar graphs and geographic representations of the data. We provide a data visualization tool to represent COVID pandemic data on top of the geographical information. The combination of geospatial and temporal data provides the information needed to conduct situational analysis for the COVTD-19 pandemic. By providing interactivity, geographical maps can be viewed from different perspectives and offer insight into the dynamical aspects of the COVTD-19 pandemic for the fifty states in the USA. We have overlaid dynamic information on top of a geographical representation in an intuitive way for decision making. We describe how modeling and simulation of data increase situational awareness, especially when coupled with immersive virtual reality interaction. This paper presents an immersive virtual reality (VR environment and mobile environment for data visualization using Oculus Rift head-mounted display and smartphones. This work combines neural network predictions with human-centric situational awareness and data analytics to provide accurate, timely, and scientific strategies in combatting and mitigating the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Testing and evaluation of the data visualization tool have been done with realtime feed of COVID pandemic data set for immersive environment, non-immersive environment, and mobile environment.

Research on Design and Experience of Immersive Virtual Reality Psychological Relaxation Game Based on Image

With the continuous progress of digital media technology and the rapid development of the game entertainment industry, people have put forward more demands on the display mode and immersion of games. Immersive stereoscopic display game based on game engine supports multi-machine and multi-projection display under various display environments, and has good stereoscopic effect and immersion feeling. The effect of psychological relaxation is highly related to immersive virtual reality environment. The relaxing effect in immersive environment is better than that in non-immersive environment. The more immersive the environment, the stronger the sense of presence, and the better the relaxing effect. With the improvement of virtual reality technology and the popularity of equipment, it provides a convenient and feasible way for the general public to obtain self-discipline of psychological relaxation. The effect of psychological relaxation is highly correlated with the immersive virtual reality environment. The relaxation effect in the immersive environment is better than that in the non-immersive environment. The more immersive the environment, the stronger the sense of presence and the better the relaxation effect.

Design and evaluation of a novel out-of-reach selection technique for VR using iterative refinement

In interactive systems, the ability to select virtual objects is essential. In immersive virtual environments, object selection is usually done at arm’s length in mid-air by directly intersecting the desired object with the user’s hand. However, selecting objects outside user’s arm-reach still poses significant challenges, which direct approaches fail to address. Techniques proposed to overcome such limitations often follow an arm-extension metaphor or favor selection volumes combined with ray-casting. Nonetheless, while these approaches work for room sized environments, they hardly scale up to larger scenarios with many objects. In this paper, we introduce a new taxonomy to classify existing selection techniques. In its wake, we propose PRECIOUS, a novel mid-air technique for selecting out-of-reach objects, featuring iterative refinement in Virtual Reality, an hitherto untried approach in this context. While comparable techniques have been developed for non-stereo and non-immersive environments, these are not suitable to Immersive Virtual Reality. Our technique is the first to employ an iterative progressive refinement in such settings. It uses cone-casting to select multiple objects and moves the user closer to them in each refinement step, to allow accurate selection of the desired target. A user evaluation showed that PRECIOUS compares favorably against state-of-the-art approaches. Indeed, our results indicate that PRECIOUS is a versatile approach to out-of-reach target acquisition, combining accurate selection with consistent task completion times across different scenarios.

Understanding Immersivity: Image Generation and Transformation Processes in 3D Immersive Environments

Most research on three-dimensional (3D) visual-spatial processing has been conducted using traditional non-immersive 2D displays. Here we investigated how individuals generate and transform mental images within 3D immersive (3DI) virtual environments, in which the viewers perceive themselves as being surrounded by a 3D world. In Experiment 1, we compared participants’ performance on the Shepard and Metzler (1971) mental rotation (MR) task across the following three types of visual presentation environments; traditional 2D non-immersive (2DNI), 3D non-immersive (3DNI – anaglyphic glasses), and 3DI (head mounted display with position and head orientation tracking). In Experiment 2, we examined how the use of different backgrounds affected MR processes within the 3DI environment. In Experiment 3, we compared electroencephalogram data recorded while participants were mentally rotating visual-spatial images presented in 3DI vs. 2DNI environments. Overall, the findings of the three experiments suggest that visual-spatial processing is different in immersive and non-immersive environments, and that immersive environments may require different image encoding and transformation strategies than the two other non-immersive environments. Specifically, in a non-immersive environment, participants may utilize a scene-based frame of reference and allocentric encoding whereas immersive environments may encourage the use of a viewer-centered frame of reference and egocentric encoding. These findings also suggest that MR performed in laboratory conditions using a traditional 2D computer screen may not reflect spatial processing as it would occur in the real world.

The virtual playground: an educational virtual reality environment for evaluating interactivity and conceptual learning

The research presented in this paper aims at investigating user interaction in immersive virtual learning environments, focusing on the role and the effect of interactivity on conceptual learning. The goal has been to examine if the learning of young users improves through interacting in (i.e. exploring, reacting to, and acting upon) an immersive virtual environment (VE) compared to non-interactive or non-immersive environments. Empirical work was carried out with more than 55 primary school students between the ages of 8 and 12, in different between-group experiments: an exploratory study, a pilot study, and a large-scale experiment. The latter was conducted in a virtual environment designed to simulate a playground. In this “Virtual Playground,” each participant was asked to complete a set of tasks designed to address arithmetical “fractions” problems. Three different conditions, two experimental virtual reality (VR) conditions and a non-VR condition, that varied the levels of activity and interactivity, were designed to evaluate how children accomplish the various tasks. Pre-tests, post-tests, interviews, video, audio, and log files were collected for each participant, and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. This paper presents a selection of case studies extracted from the qualitative analysis, which illustrate the variety of approaches taken by children in the VEs in response to visual cues and system feedback. Results suggest that the fully interactive VE aided children in problem solving but did not provide a strong evidence of conceptual change as expected; rather, it was the passive VR environment, where activity was guided by a virtual robot, that seemed to support student reflection and recall, leading to indications of conceptual change.