Online Virtual Reality Research Articles

Practicing interprofessional communication competencies with health profession learners in a palliative care virtual simulation: A curricular short report

Abstract This 6-week learning activity used an online virtual reality environment through Second Life® to advance interprofessional education with a convenience sample of undergraduate and graduate health professions learners through a simulated palliative and end-of-life care conference. The activity was implemented in four phases: scheduling, pre-learning, virtual simulation engagement, and a guided reflection discussion for closure. Four learning objectives guided the activity and addressed learner ability to: critique individual team communication performance using selected sections of the Interprofessional Collaborator Assessment Rubric (ICAR)1, demonstrate at least two specific communication skills while participating in the activity, share a list of the patient/family goals for end-of-life care, and propose at least three different strategies that could be used in their future practice to facilitate effective interprofessional care delivery. Faculty used a grading rubric to assess learner achievement of the four learning objectives. A mixed methods approach evaluated the effectiveness of the activity and effect on self-reported learner attitudes and future practice. This educational resource was an effective, accessible, and low-risk learning modality for advancing interprofessional competencies in education for practice. Teaching strategies that emphasize situated learning and reflective learning support interprofessional competency development. Use of virtual reality technologies engages learners in realistic scenarios in a safe environment free from the risk of harm to patients and families, allowing small groups of learners to meet synchronously online, and providing an alternative to face-to-face synchronous scheduling of multiple health professions disciplines, thus reducing strain on program budgets and scheduling logistics. Materials are shared and may be adapted to prepare learners for other contexts of practice.

VR creation experience in cultural heritage education: A preliminary exploration

ABSTRACTDespite an increasing adoption of virtual reality (VR) in education, few studies have explored VR creation in cultural heritage education. This study aims to investigate students' experience of creating VR content featuring cultural heritage in an undergraduate general education course repurposed from a digital collection course. A survey was conducted with 87 students, collecting both close‐ended and open‐ended responses. A coding framework was designed to analyze students' open‐ended responses. Preliminary findings show that students were largely satisfied with the experience, which helped learners from diverse academic backgrounds toward acquiring technological skills that are essential for the 21st century workforce. The VR creation experience also motivated the students to learn more about cultural heritage. Technical issues regarding spherical photo‐taking and the online VR creation tool were identified, which may call for new alternative tools and devices. Findings offer empirical evidence on the value of integrating VR creation into cultural heritage education, as well as implications for pedagogical design and educational applications of VR creation.

Constructing Identities Online- An Exploratory Study of Saudi Youths’ Strategies

Language is used not only for communication but also for enacting multiple identities to reveal information about oneself such as who we are, where we come from, who we believe in etc. This is done by means of using a tribe, gender, region or a country specific dialect, accent, sociolect, vocabulary or phrase to identify oneself with a specific tribe, gender, social class or ethnic group, a region or a nation. Greetings such as-‘Assalamualeikum’ (‘peace be with you’), ‘God bless’, ‘Shalom’ (‘peace’) are used by people to identify oneself with a particular faith (Muslim, Christian and Jewish respectively). Thus, language use serves here as a means of constructing religious identity. Region and tribe specific dialects, accents and sociolects are also used to construct regional, social class, ethnic or tribal identities. This process of identity construction occurs both in the real world as well as in a virtual reality on-line, where people can either take their real identity with them or construct an on-line identity that can be as divergent as they wish. As on-line communication gains significance in everyone’s life, research on the nature of this communication is required to uncover various underlying issues governing this type of communication. In this respect, the present study aimed to explore the strategies and ways in which language and other means were used by Saudi Arabian youths to construct and enact their various identities such as gender, social class, tribal, regional, religious etc. To this end, a social networking website was designed and Saudi youths (aged between 18 to 30 years) were invited to participate by posting and chatting online on the website. Of such posts, around 300 comments were selected for the content analysis. The analysis of these comments posted by 71 Saudi females and 85 males over two months revealed that Saudi youths used their language on-line to construct and enact their gender, tribal, regional, religious identities. Participants were seen to be using their tribe, region, gender, religion and Arab culture related words and phrases to construct and reveal their tribal, regional, gender, religious and cultural identities consciously and unconsciously.

How do shared-street design and traffic restriction improve urban soundscape and human experience? —An online survey with virtual reality

Sound, together with other sensory impressions, contributes to the perceived quality of the global environment, and influences human experience of the place. This study investigates how shared-street design and traffic restriction, two widely used street management measures in urban areas, influence urban soundscape and human experience of the place, by asking: 1) Do shared-street design and traffic restriction improve the urban soundscape? 2) In different street management scenarios, how relevant is the soundscape to human experience of the place? By means of an online virtual reality application, two street-design scenarios and two traffic-restriction scenarios were simulated, and a task-based online survey was carried out to obtain participants' responses to the simulated virtual scenarios. The results show that shared-street design made the soundscape calmer and traffic restriction made the soundscape more pleasant. There was also potential interaction between shared-street design and traffic restriction that shared-street design might lead to changes in soundscape pleasantness depending on traffic restriction. High relevance of soundscape to human experience of the place is indicated, that peoples' perception of the acoustic environment and preferences for the acoustic environmental elements contributed to their preferences for places. However, the relevance might be relatively lower in shared-street scenarios.

Exact and heuristic methods for personalized display advertising in virtual reality platforms

In this paper, motivated from a real problem faced by an online Virtual Reality (VR) platform provider, we study a personalized advertisement assignment problem. In this platform users log in/out and change their virtual locations. A number of advertisers are willing to pay for ad locations to reach these users. Every time a user visits a new location, the company displays one of the ads. At the end of a fixed time horizon, a reward is collected which depends on the number of ads of each advertiser displayed to different users. The objective is to assign ads dynamically to maximize the expected reward. The problem is studied in a framework where the behaviors of users are modeled with two-state continuous-time Markov processes. We describe two exact and four heuristic algorithms. We compare these algorithms and conduct a sensitivity analysis over problem and algorithm specific parameters. These are the main contributions of the current paper. Exact algorithms suffer from the curse of dimensionality, hence, heuristic methods might be considered instead in some cases. However, exact methods can also be used as part of heuristics since the experimental analysis demonstrates that they are robust for parameters that influence the computational requirements.

Виртуальная интернет-реальность: к проблеме категориальных признаков

The article considers some methodological aspects of the concept of “virtual reality”, used in the research area of computer technologies and their interaction with the mental world of the individual. In the paper the virtual online reality is defined as the picture of the world presented in the totality of cognitive-semiotic tools on the web pages with informational and news content. The aim of this work is to describe the categorical features of the phenomenon. Theoretical background of the research consists of the works in the field of Internet linguistics and psychological virtualistics, upon those a brief overview of the approaches to the description of the properties and characteristics of virtual reality is provided. In the framework of the proposed cognitive-semiotic approach the author offers a working list of the categorical features of online virtual reality: tessellation, visual format, carnival character, mobility. The paper provides the substantiation of the described features and outlines possible directions of further linguistic and interdisciplinary research of this phenomenon.

Constructing Identities Online – An Exploratory Study of Saudi Youths’ Strategies

Language is used not only for communication but also for enacting multiple identities to reveal information about oneself such as who we are, where we come from, who we believe in etc. This is done by means of using a tribe, gender, region or a country specific dialect, accent, sociolect, vocabulary or phrase to identify oneself with a specific tribe, gender, social class or ethnic group, a region or a nation. Greetings such as-‘Assalamualeikum’ (‘peace be with you’), ‘God bless’, ‘Shalom’ (‘peace’) are used by people to identify oneself with a particular faith (Muslim, Christian and Jewish respectively). Thus, language use serves here as a means of constructing religious identity. Region and tribe specific dialects, accents and sociolects are also used to construct regional, social class, ethnic or tribal identities. This process of identity construction occurs both in the real world as well as in a virtual reality on-line, where people can either take their real identity with them or construct an on-line identity that can be as divergent as they wish. As on-line communication gains significance in everyone’s life, research on the nature of this communication is required to uncover various underlying issues governing this type of communication. In this respect, the present study aimed to explore the strategies and ways in which language and other means were used by Saudi Arabian youths to construct and enact their various identities such as gender, social class, tribal, regional, religious etc. To this end, a social networking website was designed and Saudi youths (aged between 18 to 30 years) were invited to participate by posting and chatting online on the website. Of such posts, around 300 comments were selected for the content analysis. The analysis of these comments posted by 71 Saudi females and 85 males over two months revealed that Saudi youths used their language on-line to construct and enact their gender, tribal, regional, religious identities. Participants were seen to be using their tribe, region, gender, religion and Arab culture related words and phrases to construct and reveal their tribal, regional, gender, religious and cultural identities consciously and unconsciously.

A demonstrator tool of web-based virtual reality for participatory evaluation of urban sound environment

Using virtual reality (VR) for environmental evaluation is one of the innovations in planning process to support the involvement of local population in decision making. The power of VR in public participation is further enhanced by its application online. However, current online VR applications for public participation is mostly restricted as visualisation tools. Evaluation of the virtual sound environment is rarely supported. This study developed a demonstrator tool of web-based online VR for participatory evaluation of urban sound environment. Piazza Vittoria in Naples, Italy was used as the case site to create the virtual environment. The tool employed affordable visualisation and auralisation for the general public to use online in mainstream web browsers with their own devices. The tool was tested online and the results were analysed to discuss the applicability, potential and challenges of online VR for participatory evaluation of urban sound environment.

Exploration of the 3D World on the Internet Using Commodity Virtual Reality Devices

This article describes technical basics and applications of graphically interactive and online Virtual Reality (VR) frameworks. It automatically extracts and displays left and right stereo images from the Internet search engines, e.g., Google Image Search. Within a short waiting time, many 3D related results are returned to the users regarding aligned left and right stereo photos; these results are viewable through VR glasses. The system automatically filters different types of available 3D data from redundant pictorial datasets on the public networks (the Internet). To reduce possible copyright issues, only the search for images that are “labelled for reuse” is performed; meaning that the obtained pictures can be used for any purpose, in any area, without being modified. The system then automatically specifies if the picture is a side-by-side stereo pair, an anaglyph, a stereogram, or just a “normal” 2D image (not optically 3D viewable). The system then generates a stereo pair from the collected dataset, to seamlessly display 3D visualisation on State-of-the-art VR devices such as the low-cost Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR or Google Daydream. These devices are used to provide an immediate, controllable 3D display. In this article, we propose an image type classification technique that dynamically extracts co-aligned stereo pairs with rich 3D visualisation to VR viewers. This system is portable, simple to set up and operate. From some initial experiment results; our system is shown to be relatively fast, accurate, and easy to implement. With such system, Internet users all over theWorld could easily visualise millions of real life stereo datasets publicly available on the Internet; which are believed to be useful for VR testing and learning purposes.

Utility of a Virtual Trier Social Stress Test: Initial Findings and Benchmarking Comparisons.

The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is one of the most widely used laboratory-based acute psychosocial stressors. However, there may be advantages to conducting the TSST through the virtual world, including reducing the cost and burden (i.e., no need for colocation between the evaluators and participants). The virtual TSST might also increase the standardization between studies and provide the capacity to bring psychology experiments to more settings (e.g., the home, the magnetic resonance imaging scanner). Fifty undergraduate students participated in the TSST conducted through an online virtual reality program, using a computer screen and microphone/earphone headset. The present study found that the virtual TSST produced a significant acute stress response, measured both through cortisol (F(1,128) = 31.91, p < .001) and subjective report (F(1,148) = 72.86, p < .001). In addition, this method differentially produced a dampened cortisol response (F(1,126) = 4.41, p < .04) in those who had experienced recent loss (e.g., bereavement, romantic breakup, homesickness), similar to prior research. Virtual reality-based administration of the TSST and other mental challenge protocols increases the possibilities of many standard psychological experiments relevant to biobehavioral research.

Realistic and interactive high-resolution 4D environments for real-time surgeon and patient interaction.

Remote consultations that are realistic enough to be useful medically offer considerable clinical, logistical and cost benefits. Despite advances in virtual reality and vision hardware and software, these benefits are currently often unrealised. The proposed approach combines high spatial and temporal resolution 3D and 2D machine vision with virtual reality techniques, in order to develop new environments and instruments that will enable realistic remote consultations and the generation of new types of useful clinical data. New types of clinical data have been generated for skin analysis and respiration measurement; and the combination of 3D with 2D data was found to offer potential for the generation of realistic virtual consultations. An innovative combination of high resolution machine vision data and virtual reality online methods, promises to provide advanced functionality and significant medical benefits, particularly in regions where populations are dispersed or access to clinicians is limited. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Virtual worlds: Relationship between real life and experience in Second Life

&lt;p&gt;Due to the unique applications of virtual reality in many modern contexts, Second Life (SL) offers inimitable opportunities for research and exploration and experiential learning as part of a distance learning curriculum assignment. A review of current research regarding SL examined real world social influences in online interactions and what the effects on users may be. This aids students in understanding the social constructionist perceptions and worldview of those persons they may serve in social services. This suggests the importance of developing an understanding of the relationship between users’ real life (RL) and their SL. Some research has begun to reveal the effectiveness of telecommunication and computer simulation with certain clients in the fields of mental health and social work, yet there is a lack of sufficient research done within the context of virtual worlds. The current study surveyed users of several educationally and health focused SIMS (simulations) as to what motivates their SL and RL interactions. The data explores associations between users’ RL and their SL in several areas,potentially addressing the future role of educating social work students regarding research methodology in online virtual reality interactions. Implications for social work are discussed including engaging clients using incentives for social participation built into the SL milieu.&lt;/p&gt;

THE USABILITY OF ONLINE GEOGRAPHIC VIRTUAL REALITY FOR URBAN PLANNING

Abstract. Virtual reality (VR) technology is starting to become widely and freely available (for example the online OpenSimulator tool), with potential for use in 3D urban planning and design tasks but still needing rigorous assessment to establish this. A previous study consulted with a small group of urban professionals, who concluded in a satisfaction usability test that online VR had potential value as a usable 3D communication and remote marketing tool but acknowledged that visual quality and geographic accuracy were obstacles to overcome. This research takes the investigation a significant step further to also examine the usability aspects of efficiency (how quickly tasks are completed) and effectiveness (how successfully tasks are completed), relating to OpenSimulator in an urban planning situation. The comparative study pits a three-dimensional VR model (with increased graphic fidelity and geographic content to address the feedback of the previous study) of a subdivision design (in a Dunedin suburb) against 3D models built with GIS (ArcGIS) and CAD (BricsCAD) tools, two types of software environment well established in urban professional practice. Urban professionals participated in the study by attempting to perform timed tasks correctly in each of the environments before being asked questions about the technologies involved and their perceived importance to their professional work. The results reinforce the positive feedback for VR of the previous study, with the graphical and geographic data issues being somewhat addressed (though participants stressed the need for accurate and precise object and terrain modification capabilities in VR). Ease-ofuse and associated fastest task completion speed were significant positive outcomes to emerge from the comparison with GIS and CAD, pointing to a strong future for VR in an urban planning context.

Creature-101: A Virtual Reality Online Game to Promote Energy Balance Related Behaviors among Middle-Schoolers

To evaluate the effectiveness of Creature-101 game at modifying middle-schoolers eating and physical activity behaviors. Middle school aged students. Prior games in nutrition education have focused primarily at increasing fruit and vegetables (FV) and physical activity (PA). Using social cognitive and self-determination theories as framework Creature-101 aims at increasing FV, water, PA, decreasing processed snacks (PS)(e.g. chips, candy), sweetened beverages (SB), and recreational screen time, and improving psychosocial mediators (knowledge, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, autonomous motivation). Creature-101 incorporates creature care in a virtual world “Tween”. In the game (7-sessions, 30-minutes each) students learn scientific evidence that promotes energy balance by playing mini-games, short educational videos, slideshows and interactive dialogues with game characters. Students also assess their own behaviors; create own “real life” food and activity action plans, and report their progress. Outcome evaluation used a quasi-experimental design (matched-paired schools) with 359 students in intervention; 172 students in control (delayed intervention) condition. Students (11-13yrs old, 50% males, 65% Hispanics) played Creature-101 in science/health education classes for 1-month. Two self-reported, validated, online surveys were administered at baseline and post intervention. Analysis of covariance compared post-test means between groups. Intention to treat analysis showed significant decreases in frequency of consumption of PS (scale:0-5, I=1.79±1.22, C=2.14±1.37, p<0.000) and increase in knowledge (scale:0-11, I=5.06±3.91, C=4.06± 1.43, p=0.012). Positive trends (p<0.1) were reported for consuming fewer SB (scale:0-5, I=1.72±1.12, C=1.95± 1.16, p=0.08), smaller sizes SB (scale:0-3, I=1.46±0.88, C=1.65±0.93, p=0.09) and PS (scale:0-3, I=1.46±0.88, C=1.65±0.93, p=0.09). Creature-101 may be effective in modifying eating behaviors in middle-schoolers to promote energy-balance.

A collaborative working environment for small group meetings in Second Life

This paper presents the SLMeetingRoom, a virtual reality online environment to support group meetings of geographically dispersed participants. A prototype was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach using the Second Life platform. Ten additional components had to be added to Second Life environment to support group work essential activities such as participants’ communication, tasks’ and participants’ coordination, participants’ collaboration and work evolution’s perception. Empirical studies, both pilot and experiment, were developed comparing four different meeting settings: face-to-face, videoconference, stand Second Life and SLMeetingRoom. The study involved graduate students enrolled in the Interface and Multimedia discipline at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF) in Brazil. Results indicated that groups working within SLMeetingRoom environment presented similar results as face-to-face meeting as far as sense of presence is concerned and with low cognitive effort. Task completion and degree of participation were not affected by the meeting set up. It was concluded that Second Life, in conjunction with the SLMeetingRoom components, is a good tool for holding synchronous remote meetings and coexists with other electronic meeting technologies.

Talleres de creatividad en islas virtuales: espacios participativos en línea

Art education, combined with new technologies, has found a new source of resources to grow and expand. In these new relationships, where traditional techniques are fused with digital systems, we focus on a collaborative practices carried out under the european program Villes 3.0. Specifically in a creativity workshop based on the interrelationships that may arise between virtual worlds and artistic expression, giving visibility to the educational potential offered us by the new spaces of virtual reality online.

Training Efficient Nutrition Counseling in Virtual Reality

Healthcare providers are tasked with providing nutrition guidance to their patients, something they are neither taught adequately nor given an opportunity to improve their counseling skill under supervision. Unmentored learning on the job is unlikely to help them conduct effective and efficient sessions. We have created an online virtual reality (VR) environment where learners can practice how to counsel patients about lifestyle change that lowers their blood cholesterol levels.Seamless patient video responds to user prompts. Input items support selection from a range of domains or sub domains, thus allowing the user to freely navigate through content space just like in a natural dialog. The patient responses depend both on the selected topic and the specific phrasing of the user's input. Diverse patient scenarios with differences in stage of change and attitude allow multiple sessions without repetition of the dialogs. The user can select a training mode of the application and get continuous visual feedback from a dashboard. The gauges indicate accuracy of the user's nutrition guidance, consideration of the patient's stage of change, and reliance on motivational interviewing techniques. The sessions are timed to emphasize the importance of efficient interactions. After each counseling session, the application shows a dialog transcript linked to a display of the continuously recorded performance metrics.

The Internet and Computer-Mediated Artefacts for Foreign Language Learning and Practice, and Intercultural Communication: MOODLE, Second Life, and Others

Abstract The present study aims at discussing the potential of the Internet and computer-mediated artefacts for education. The understanding of digitalised and technology utilised education, which is the current trend of our age, is highlighted and some computer-mediated artefacts such as the so called modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment (MOODLE), the online virtual reality chatting game Second Life, and some others are introduced in a unified connection to show how they can be practically integrated in education, and how they can foster foreign language learning and practice, and intercultural communication. It is emphasised that the current situation of the physical conditions, and also the needs, interests and abilities of the new age learners should be considered more carefully to give education a correct direction in the future.

WebVR——Web Virtual Reality Engine Based on P2P network

WebVR, a multi-user online virtual reality engine, is introduced. The main contributions are mapping the geographical space and virtual space to the P2P overlay network space, and dividing the three spaces by quad-tree method. The geocoding is identified with Hash value, which is used to index the user list, terrain data, and the model object data. Sharing of data through improved Kademlia network model is designed and implemented. In this model, XOR algorithm is used to calculate the distance of the virtual space. The model greatly improves the hit rate of 3D geographic data search under P2P overlay network. Some data preprocessing methods have been adopted to accelerate the data transfer. 3D Global data is used for testing the engine. The test result indicates that, without considering the client bandwidth limit, the more users, the faster loading.

Adaptive Framework for Online Deployment of Virtual Scenes on Heterogeneous Applications

With emergence of online virtual reality applications, the 3D data of virtual scenes are available to heterogeneous end user devices with relatively limited computing power, resolution and transmission rate. Still, many virtual scenes created by expert developers are composed of complex 3D data models with huge number of geometry primitives and appearence elements. This complexity can cause a lot of problems when the scenes are deployed on the limited access devices. To address this issue, we propose a virtual scene adaptation framework which is able to perform the transformation of given complex 3D model into new forms with less geometric and appearance data. Through the framework, complex virtual scenes are connected with real-world semantics and are preprocessed with selected optimization strategies based on the semantic features matching client devices’ capabilities before deployment.