Virtual Reality Stories Research Articles

Understanding Expressions of Self-Determination Theory in the Evaluation of IDEA-Themed VR Storytelling

This study investigates how prior experiences (personal or a close other’s) influence individuals’ engagement with virtual reality (VR) stories designed to promote understanding and foster prosocial behavior. Integrating self-determination theory and self–other overlap, we conducted an experimental mixed-method study with 35 participants who experienced three VR stories focused on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA): living with Alzheimer’s, blindness, and in a refugee camp. Findings indicate that while participants felt some autonomy with the VR headset, they experienced a lack of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the storytelling. Participants engaged in perspective-taking but often thought about those close to them who had similar experiences rather than themselves. Thus, a close other’s experience affected whether people engaged in perspective-taking. However, prior experience with IDEA topics did not predict cognitive effort, indicating that individuals with such experience do not exert more cognitive effort than those without it. Additionally, cognitive effort did not predict prosocial attitudes or behaviors. This study highlights the complexities of how previous experiences affect engagement with IDEA-centered VR, perspective-taking, and cognitive effort and suggests directions for future research.

Designing immersive stories with novice VR creators: a study of autobiographical VR storytelling during the COVID-19 pandemic

Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used as a tool for eliciting empathy and emotional identification in fact-based stories. However, it may not be clear whether VR stories authentically deliver the protagonists’ perspectives if the works are not created by or with the protagonists themselves. Therefore, it is crucial for the VR community to explore effective methods for democratizing VR storytelling, and to support novice VR designers in creating autobiographical stories. In this paper, we report findings from a collaborative design research project that aimed to create autobiographical stories with novice VR designers who lacked experience in VR storytelling. We collaborated with university students in Canada to design eight individual VR stories that expressed each student’s experiences of lockdown, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted interviews with the students to understand how VR contributed to conveying their individual experiences. Our findings demonstrate how immersive VR can be used as a meaningful tool for sharing autobiographical stories by delivering the character’s feelings, creating a sense of confinement and isolation, expressing inner worlds, and showing environmental details. Our discussion draws attention to the significance of careful camera positioning and movement in VR story design, the meaningful use of limited interaction and disorienting components, and the balance between spatial and temporal information in a three-dimensional environment. Our study highlights the potential of VR as an autobiographical storytelling tool and demonstrates how VR stories can be created through iterative collaboration between VR experts and novices.

Understanding How News Content Utilizes Experiential Media (AR, VR, and 360° Video) in COVID-19 Storytelling

A growing body of research indicates how experiential media (EM) technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 360° video are diffusing widely around the world, thereby transforming media practices and the user experience. The current study looks at immersive news content production (EM stories) that seek to inform the public on how the COVID-19 virus spreads, the precautions required to protect from getting infected by the virus, and a general understanding of COVID-19 as a pandemic. Based on a list of six criteria, a total of six EM stories (two AR stories by the New York Times (NYT), two 360° video stories by National Geographic (Nat Geo), and two VR stories by Meta’s Oculus App in collaboration with other media organizations) were identified for the study. This exploratory study uses qualitative research methodology and the Experiential Media theoretical framework to understand to 1) what extent such immersive news content production utilizes the six EM qualities in COVID-19 storytelling? 2) what themes do such EM stories and the accompanying static news story reported online cover? 3) what new knowledge, if any, do such EM stories provide compared to the accompanying static news story online? The findings from the study offer a theoretical understanding of the role EM technologies play in highlighting global health crisis such as COVID-19, particularly through immersive 3D visualizations, and provides practical implications for EM content producers. Keywords: experiential media, augmented reality, virtual reality, 360° video, COVID-19, news

Where to look? Sustaining Presence While Directing Attention in Virtual Reality Stories.

Humans have been fascinated with the notion of submerging themselves in other spaces since antiquity, or even before. As the contemporary media landscape seeks to employ newer immersive practices, particularly in today’s Metaverse environment, storytelling in immersive media such as virtual reality (VR) is still developing and being described. The notion of scale and (newfound) viewer agency afforded by VR has challenged VR film-makers, particularly in directing attention towards story beats and handling user interaction. The video gaming industry, as a platform that is built with immersion as the core of the experience, leads this development. The advent of virtual reality (VR) video games is developing an amalgamation of immersive strategies to induce the sense of presence within virtual worlds. In this article I look at current approaches and challenges faced when directing attention in films and storytelling in VR. I then consider strides taken in VR video games, namely Half-Life: Alyx (2020), to propose that directing techniques and immersive strategies employed in VR video games can be used to develop new strategies in VR films and storytelling.

Influence of Directional Sound Cues on Users' Exploration Across 360° Movie Cuts.

Virtual reality (VR) is a powerful medium for $360^{\circ }$360∘ storytelling, yet content creators are still in the process of developing cinematographic rules for effectively communicating stories in VR. Traditional cinematography has relied for over a century on well-established techniques for editing, and one of the most recurrent resources for this are cinematic cuts that allow content creators to seamlessly transition between scenes. One fundamental assumption of these techniques is that the content creator can control the camera; however, this assumption breaks in VR: Users are free to explore $360^{\circ }$360∘ around them. Recent works have studied the effectiveness of different cuts in $360^{\circ }$360∘ content, but the effect of directional sound cues while experiencing these cuts has been less explored. In this work, we provide the first systematic analysis of the influence of directional sound cues in users' behavior across $360^{\circ }$360∘ movie cuts, providing insights that can have an impact on deriving conventions for VR storytelling.

A Sense of Place: VR Journalism and Emotional Engagement

ABSTRACT Virtual reality (VR) and other immersive technologies introduce new opportunities for emotionally compelling narratives and user agency. Virtually mediated environments lie at the heart of immersive journalism (IJ) experiences, foregrounding a sense of presence and bridging the connection between the user and the character. Mediated environments in VR stories provide more than a setting since the user can interact with and respond to the surroundings. Drawing on the theory of spatial narrative, documentary and cinema literature and studies on media morality, this article examines the meaning of place in VR news stories and its ability to engage the user with the story. This study contributes to the discussion of creating and communicating places in journalism studies by examining spatial storytelling in immersive news stories, which are available in the NYT VR smartphone application. This paper argues that spatial storytelling eventually affects what is experienced and how it is experienced either by demonstrating the circumstances with aesthetical elements or via the selection of spaces.

Discussion on VR Storytelling Production

In this paper, we present that Virtual Reality (VR) is a type of media that has attracted interest in storytelling and media utilization. VR was first discussed as a specific narrative medium with traditional story medium. Via this discussion, The innate difference of VR is that the role of the media users in which the narrative is communicated were active in the development of the narrative unlike that of most classical narrative media. We also discussed specific features related to VR based on the theories of traditional literary criticism, movie reviews, and plays. Through these discussions, we aruged two directions of VR storytelling production as an narrative medium, its specificity, and its expressiveness for VR producers. First, story processing and characters can be introduced as part of continuing a new narrative by altering the interaction history that appears in VR stories to user interest ratings. Second, VR interaction responds intuitively to the idea that it represents a trajectory across the story surface of all possible interactions. More specific theories and controvercials are discussed.

Reconstructing Personal Stories in Virtual Reality sas a Mechanism to Recover the Self.

Advances in virtual reality present opportunities to relive experiences in an immersive medium that can change the way we perceive our life stories, potentially shaping our realities for the better. This paper studies the role of virtual reality as a tool for the creation of stories with the concept of the self as a narrator and the life of the self as a storyline. The basis of the study is the philosophical notion of the self-narrative as an explanatory story of the events in one’s life that constitutes the notion of one’s self. This application is suitable for cases when individuals need to recreate their self, such as during recovery after traumatic events. The analysis of the effects of virtual reality shows that it enables a person to engage in a process of deeper self-observation to understand and explain adverse events and to give meaning to these events to form a new story, which can complement the therapeutic outcomes of exposure treatments. This study proposes concrete examples of immersive scenarios used to reconstruct personal stories. Several possible levels of experience are proposed to suggest that recovery can be achieved through the gradual retelling of the self-narrative, addressing all of the underlying narratives. Considering the ethical challenges that might arise, this paper explores the ways in which immersion in virtual reality can benefit a person’s view toward life as a story and his or her self as its author, comparing this idea with previous research on the application of virtual reality for trauma treatment. The analysis also emphasizes the perception of narrative authorship in virtual reality as an essential method for recovering the self-narrative and improving a patient’s mental health during self-actualization.

Exploring immersive experience in journalism

Although virtual reality (VR) has been widely used to deliver news stories in immersive journalism (IJ), it is not clear how people are actually experiencing these stories and their contexts. Focusing on the immersion feature of VR stories, this study explicates the user experience to determine what it is like to experience news stories in VR and how immersion improves viewing experiences in IJ. This study proposes a VR experience model in the IJ context that integrates cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors as the primary influencing determinants. The results indicate that the meaning of immersion strongly depends on the users’ traits and contexts and that the function of immersion is strongly determined by the users’ own cognition and intentions. VR stories are viewed and accepted based on the manner that users imagine and intend to experience them. The model demonstrates the users’ cognitive processes of experiencing quality, value, and satisfaction, which determine how people empathize with and embody VR stories. The results confirm the relationship between immersion and both empathy and embodiment, implying a new conceptualization of immersion in the IJ context.

Empathy and embodied experience in virtual environment: To what extent can virtual reality stimulate empathy and embodied experience?

This study investigates the user experience to clarify what it is like to experience stories in VR (virtual reality) and how immersion influences story experiences in immersive storytelling. This study explores the immersive storytelling context, developing and testing a VR experience model that integrates presence, flow, empathy, and embodiment. The results imply that users’ personal traits correlates immersion in VR: user experience in VR depend on individual traits, which in turns influence how strongly users immerse in a VR. The way users view and accept VR stories derives from the way they envisage and intend to experience them. Rather than simply being influenced by technological features, users have intentional and purposeful control over VR stories. The findings of this study suggest that the cognitive processes by which users experience quality, presence, and flow determine how they will empathize with and embody VR stories.