Virtual Reality World Research Articles

РАБОТА С МЛАДШИМИ ШКОЛЬНИКАМИ ПО РАЗВИТИЮ НАВЫКОВ РЕЧЕВОЙ КОММУНИКАЦИИ ПОСРЕДСТВОМ ТЕАТРАЛИЗОВАННОЙ ИГРЫ

The article is devoted to the work with children of primary school age on developing the skills of speech communication, which is especially important today due to the spread of information technologies and the tendency to immerse oneself in the virtual reality world from early childhood. The result is desocialization, inability to express thoughts and feelings, deterioration of health, both spiritual and physical. For a child of primary school age, a game remains the most intimate, comprehensible and fascinating kind of activity, especially theatrical one, in which he/she, when entering into various types of interaction, develops the skills of verbal communication. The paper describes an experiment that was conducted with primary school children in the House of Children’s Creativity, proving the effectiveness of the theatrical game in developing the skills of verbal communication.

Why and how to use virtual reality to study human social interaction: The challenges of exploring a new research landscape.

As virtual reality (VR) technology and systems become more commercially available and accessible, more and more psychologists are starting to integrate VR as part of their methods. This approach offers major advantages in experimental control, reproducibility, and ecological validity, but also has limitations and hidden pitfalls which may distract the novice user. This study aimed to guide the psychologist into the novel world of VR, reviewing available instrumentation and mapping the landscape of possible systems. We use examples of state‐of‐the‐art research to describe challenges which research is now solving, including embodiment, uncanny valley, simulation sickness, presence, ethics, and experimental design. Finally, we propose that the biggest challenge for the field would be to build a fully interactive virtual human who can pass a VR Turing test – and that this could only be achieved if psychologists, VR technologists, and AI researchers work together.

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.

Perceptual Rules for Building Enhancements in 3D Virtual Worlds

Abstract While the generation of geometric 3D virtual models has become feasible to a great extent, the enrichment of the resulting urban building models with semantics remains an open research question in the field of geoinformation and geovisualisation. This additional information is not only valuable for applications like Building Information Modeling (BIM) but also offers possibilities to enhance the visual insight for humans when interacting with that kind of data. Depending on the application, presenting users the highest level of detail of building models is often neither the most informative nor feasible way. For example when using mobile apps, resources and display sizes are quite limited. A concrete use case is the imparting of building use types in urban scenes to users. Within our preliminary work, user studies helped to identify important features for the human ability to associate a building with its correct usage type. In this work we now embed this knowledge into building category-specific grammars to automatically modify the geometry of a building to align its visual appearance to its underlying use type. If the building category for a model is not known beforehand, we investigate its feature space and try to derive its use type from there. Within the context of this work, we developed a Virtual Reality (VR) framework that gives the user the possibility to switch between different building representation types while moving in the VR world, thus enabling us in the future to evaluate the potential and effect of the grammar-enhanced building model in an immersive environment.

Self-reported discomfort when using commercially targeted virtual reality equipment in discomfort distraction

Commercially targeted virtual reality (VR) equipment is gaining popularity and might be a viable tool for pain distraction. This experimental research aimed to discover whether active distraction techniques (such as commercially targeted VR and video games) result in reduced subjective discomfort relative to passive distraction techniques. The study examined a healthy adult population who experienced an experimentally induced discomfort task. Participants were 27 adults, 14 females and 13 males. Participants completed four tasks, a baseline measure of physical discomfort, video clip distraction (passive distraction), video game distraction (active distraction) and exploring a VR world using an Oculus Rift head-mounted display (active distraction). In all four test conditions, participants were asked to sit on a chair holding their non-dominant leg at a height of approximately 30 cm from the floor, up to a maximum of 5 min. Counterbalancing of task order was conducted to reduce effects of participant fatigue. The participants indicated significantly reduced self-reported discomfort in the active distraction tasks when compared to the passive distraction tasks. While the findings demonstrate the effectiveness of a commercially targeted VR technology in increasing pain tolerance, the relative benefits of this technology over non-immersive video games are not apparent.

TV Moves into Virtual Reality as a Projection of Development

The rapid development of digital technologies has a significant impact on the media market and media systems as a whole. Despite the fact that traditional TV has become the first to have mastered the digital platform and still retains leadership among audiences of different countries, it is also experiencing the pressure of evolutionary technologies. One of these areas is the competitive dynamic development of technological tools to create a virtual reality that completely captures the attention of consumers, especially the younger generation, and plunges them into the space of the surreal world. But is TV actually not familiar with virtual reality or is it just a stereotype, established as a result of the existence of analog TV for several decades in the last century? This author considers the terminological backing of virtual reality and the emergence of this definition as exemplified by cinema and TV, as well as analyzes the signing of the cooperation agreement between the Russian TV channel Digital TV (part of the holding VGTRK) and the largest technology company KROK for the purpose of creating a consortium for the development of virtual reality in the Russian market. The author also addresses the issue of possible consumer awareness manipulation, especially among the younger generation, with the abuses of games and other applications of virtual reality, and reveals dissonance in consumer awareness of the virtual and objective realities in the future. Besides, the trend of development in Russian TV broadcasting is considered, identified in the framework of the International Congress of the National Association of Broadcasters. The author rationalizes the involvement of the younger generation in the world of virtual reality, assuming that it will not only improve the profitability and capitalization of TV as the leading media system, but may also attract target audiences to domestic television viewing.

Electro-Tactile Feedback System to Enhance Virtual Reality Experience

Virtual Reality (VR) has been proven to be capable of enabling its users to experience immersive virtual environments and interact with the computer. Most VR applications utilize stereo visual perception, however, stereo visual perception alone is not enough to fully immerse users in VR environments. Haptic feedback technology when applied to VR applications can offer improved immersion and interactivity and can extend the range of sensations experienced by the user. For example, tactile feedback can enable the user to feel an object they touch with their virtual hand or body. To provide tactile feedback in VR applications most researchers construct cumbersome mechanical actuators and linkages for applying feedback forces or vibrations to the user's real hand or body. Having to wear cumbersome feedback hardware can have the negative effect of making the user more aware of their physical body which can reduce the sense of being immersed in the VR world. To overcome this drawback we propose an alternative feedback system which is comprised of a hand gesture interface, a stereo visual head-set and an electro-tactile feedback system. Our electro-tactile feedback system is compact, simple, inexpensive and capable of delivering a variety of feedback sensations to the user. Experimental results are provided which demonstrate how the electro-tactile feedback system can enhance both the sense of immersion and interactivity for VR users.

Effects of repeated snowboard exercise in virtual reality with time lags of visual scene behind body rotation on head stability and subjective slalom run performance in healthy young subjects

Conclusion: After repeated snowboard exercises in the virtual reality (VR) world with increasing time lags in trials 3–8, it is suggested that the adaptation to repeated visual-vestibulosomatosensory conflict in the VR world improved dynamic posture control and motor performance in the real world without the development of motion sickness.Objectives: The VR technology was used and the effects of repeated snowboard exercise examined in the VR world with time lags between visual scene and body rotation on the head stability and slalom run performance during exercise in healthy subjects.Methods: Forty-two healthy young subjects participated in the study. After trials 1 and 2 of snowboard exercise in the VR world without time lag, trials 3–8 were conducted with 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, and 0.6 s time lags of the visual scene that the computer creates behind board rotation, respectively. Finally, trial 9 was conducted without time lag. Head linear accelerations and subjective slalom run performance were evaluated.Results: The standard deviations of head linear accelerations in inter-aural direction were significantly increased in trial 8, with a time lag of 0.6 s, but significantly decreased in trial 9 without a time lag, compared with those in trial 2 without a time lag. The subjective scores of slalom run performance were significantly decreased in trial 8, with a time lag of 0.6 s, but significantly increased in trial 9 without a time lag, compared with those in trial 2 without a time lag. Motion sickness was not induced in any subjects.

Slaves of Vision: The Virtual Reality World of Oculus Rift

In 2011, I wrote in the book 21st-Century Hollywood: Movies in the Era of Transformation, that: in 1956, Charles Eric Maine (born David McIlwain in 1921) published a superb, often overlooked scienc...

The Second Arab Awakening: Revolution, Democracy, and the Islamist Challenge from Tunis to Damascus

The Second Arab Awakening: Revolution, Democracy, and the Islamist Challenge from Tunis to Damascus

Using your own muscles

Leveraging the user's own muscles to simulate impact and forces from a virtual reality world allows us to create more immersive experiences without bulky equipment.

A central role for the retrosplenial cortex in de novo environmental learning.

With experience we become accustomed to the types of environments that we normally encounter as we navigate in the world. But how does this fundamental knowledge develop in the first place and what brain regions are involved? To examine de novo environmental learning, we created an 'alien' virtual reality world populated with landmarks of which participants had no prior experience. They learned about this environment by moving within it during functional MRI (fMRI) scanning while we tracked their evolving knowledge. Retrosplenial cortex (RSC) played a central and highly selective role by representing only the most stable, permanent features in this world. Subsequently, increased coupling was noted between RSC and hippocampus, with hippocampus then expressing knowledge of permanent landmark locations and overall environmental layout. Studying how environmental representations emerge from scratch provided a new window into the information processing underpinning the brain's navigation system, highlighting the key influence of the RSC.

Multimodal interaction with virtual worlds XMMVR: eXtensible language for MultiModal interaction with virtual reality worlds

Based on a philosophy of integrating components from multimodal interaction applications with 3D graphical environments, reusing already defined markup language for describing graphics, graphical and spoken interactions based on the interactive movie metaphor, a markup language for modeling scenes, behavior and interaction is sought. With the definition of this language, we hope to have a common framework for developing applications that allow multimodal interaction at 3D stages. Thus we have defined the basis of an architecture that allows us to integrate the components of such multimodal interaction applications in 3D virtual environments.

Virtual and Real World Adaptation for Pedestrian Detection.

Pedestrian detection is of paramount interest for many applications. Most promising detectors rely on discriminatively learnt classifiers, i.e., trained with annotated samples. However, the annotation step is a human intensive and subjective task worth to be minimized. By using virtual worlds we can automatically obtain precise and rich annotations. Thus, we face the question: can a pedestrian appearance model learnt in realistic virtual worlds work successfully for pedestrian detection in real-world images? Conducted experiments show that virtual-world based training can provide excellent testing accuracy in real world, but it can also suffer the data set shift problem as real-world based training does. Accordingly, we have designed a domain adaptation framework, V-AYLA, in which we have tested different techniques to collect a few pedestrian samples from the target domain (real world) and combine them with the many examples of the source domain (virtual world) in order to train a domain adapted pedestrian classifier that will operate in the target domain. V-AYLA reports the same detection accuracy than when training with many human-provided pedestrian annotations and testing with real-world images of the same domain. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work demonstrating adaptation of virtual and real worlds for developing an object detector.

A genetic algorithm based optimization framework to visualize, evaluate, and modify 3D space configurations in Desktop VR

This paper presents the design and implementation of a Desktop VR (Virtual Reality) framework for generating and evaluating Pareto-optimal alternate 3D spatial configurations using GA (genetic algorithms). The 3-tier framework involves the generation of the Pareto-optimal plans using GA which are subsequently visualized first using a Java-based 2D Interface and finally in the form of a 3D VR scene. The search spaces (function domains) are extremely large in today’s multifaceted interior design situations, and the optimization procedure involves conflicting objective functions, and limitations in the form of constraint functions. The interior space allocation problem is formulated and implemented as the “optimal configuration of artifacts”. When using GAs, a group of Pareto-optimal solutions (Pareto set) are available for the planners and decision-makers, wherefrom one solution ought to be picked. Therefore, this study applies a tool to not only visually evaluate the plans, but also to interact with those plans to develop them further if needed. Besides enabling the optimal spatial configuration of the scene elements, this framework also facilitates evaluation and interaction via the 3D VR worlds. The framework aids the proactive exploration, analysis, and finalization of design aspects such as color, size, lighting, etc. of the various elements prior to the actual construction. The results demonstrate the robust performance of the GA and the final 3D VR environment with dynamic interactive capabilities. This final interface facilitates “GA-Compliant” transformations and scene modifications thereby facilitating the exploration and examination of alternative scene configurations.

Searching For Virtual Venus in Life Simulation Games

This article stipulates on the successfully generated social aspects of fictional virtual simulation games bound in time and space such as Sims and Farmville. These simulated virtual gaming worlds are an extension of our reality where we recognise motivation and self-fulfilment and approve of it as a successful, thriving and engaging society. A society that emerges and overlaps with the real world of the players, their families, friends and workplace; based on Anselm Strauss’s concept1 of overlapping social worlds (Lehdonvirta, 2010). Further, in time our actions and patterns of behaviour that prevail in the form of our ‘Avatar’ are being stored within these virtual gaming worlds thereby blurring the boundaries between virtual and real. Therefore, as an analogy, by examining the existing paradigms (mental and emotional frameworks) within these virtual gaming worlds and drawing on conclusions as to what makes virtual gaming worlds successful and thriving, I seek to propose if it would be possible to harness the ‘Virtual Venus’, a concept where paradigms of Utopia that may abide in virtual gaming world could be transferred into real social worlds to promote harmony. Therefore, the ‘Virtual Venus’ model would be a research tool in understanding the implications of combining the virtual with the real and observing mankind’s behaviour through the act of play. ‘Virtual Venus’ would then act as interactive, immersive virtual-real world that can overcome these limitations and foster a better understanding of communities or cultures.

Application of Virtual Reality Technology in Construction Control and Management

The virtual reality is an advanced technology in the modern man-made environment. A three-dimensional virtual reality world is produced by computer simulation to make users feel as if they were personally on the scene. By building the virtual model and virtual construction process, construction control and management based on the virtual reality system can be used to improve efficiency of project management and construction, ensure construction progress, save cost, improve safety and reduce engineering risk, so as to provide guidance for engineering construction.

Learning to walk in virtual reality

This article provides longitudinal data for when participants learned to travel with a walking metaphor through virtual reality (VR) worlds, using interfaces that ranged from joystick-only, to linear and omnidirectional treadmills, and actual walking in VR. Three metrics were used: travel time, collisions (a measure of accuracy), and the speed profile. The time that participants required to reach asymptotic performance for traveling, and what that asymptote was, varied considerably between interfaces. In particular, when a world had tight turns (0.75 m corridors), participants who walked were more proficient than those who used a joystick to locomote and turned either physically or with a joystick, even after 10 minutes of training. The speed profile showed that this was caused by participants spending a notable percentage of the time stationary, irrespective of whether or not they frequently played computer games. The study shows how speed profiles can be used to help evaluate participants' proficiency with travel interfaces, highlights the need for training to be structured to addresses specific weaknesses in proficiency (e.g., start-stop movement), and for studies to measure and report that proficiency.

A serious game model for cultural heritage

Serious games present a promising opportunity for learning, but the genre still lacks methodologies and tools for efficient and low-cost production, particularly for teacher and domain experts. This article gives an authoring framework that aims to provide structured support, from content design to final implementation. In particular, we have abstracted a conceptual model—the SandBox Serious Game - which relies on a generalization of task-based learning theory. The model invites players to perform cognitive tasks contextually while exploring information-rich virtual environments. We consider it particularly suited for cultural heritage entertainment applications. The model defines games that are set in realistic virtual worlds enriched with embedded educational tasks, which we have implemented as minigames. This approach simplifies the authoring work, which can easily be supported by visual authoring tools for ontology-based urban 3D modeling and implementation tasks, thus allowing an approach similar to the mind-maps concept. We propose a top-down methodology for content preparation, starting from a city-level analysis down to the single points of interest and associated tasks, which are instances of simple predefined minigame/quiz typologies. We provide examples and discuss criteria for selecting task typologies according to the authors' cognitive targets. Finally, we discuss the results of a user test, which took place in a lab, aimed at verifying the acquisition of cultural heritage knowledge in a pleasant and engaging way. Games appear particularly suited for supporting the study of images, especially of iconography. Compared to reading text, a game forces the player to focus more strongly on problems, which favors knowledge acquisition and retention. Learning complex concepts requires an investigative attitude, which can be spurred by well-designed games. Good design involves usability, graphic appeal, appropriate content, and the presence of connections which a player must discover in the content. Players should be asked to pay attention to and reason about their whole game activity - including the relationships between the game content, the brief introduction, and concluding texts. More comprehensive tests are needed to better investigate the educational effectiveness—however, the first results are promising, especially in terms of user motivation and creation of new opportunities for learning about CH.

Real-time construction worker posture analysis for ergonomics training

Construction activities performed by workers are usually repetitive and physically demanding. Execution of such tasks in awkward postures can strain their body parts and can result in fatigue, injuries or in severe cases permanent disabilities. In view of this, it is essential to train workers, before the commencement of any construction activity. Furthermore, traditional worker monitoring methods are tedious, inefficient and are carried out manually whereas, an automated approach, apart from monitoring, can yield valuable information concerning work-related behavior of worker that can be beneficial for worker training in a virtual reality world. Our research work focuses on developing an automated approach for posture estimation and classification using a range camera for posture analysis and categorizing it as ergonomic or non-ergonomic. Using a range camera, first we classify worker’s pose to determine whether a worker is ‘standing’, ‘bending’, ‘sitting’, or ‘crawling’ and then estimate the posture of the worker using OpenNI middleware to get the body joint angles and spatial locations. A predefined set of rules is then formulated to use this body posture information to categorize tasks as ergonomic or non-ergonomic.