VR Game Research Articles

User-Defined Foot Gestures for Eyes-Free Interaction in Smart Shower Rooms

With the rapid development of natural human-computer interaction technologies, gesture-based interfaces have become popular. Although gesture interaction has received extensive attention from both academia and industry, most existing studies focus on hand gesture input, leaving foot-gesture-based interfaces underexplored, especially in scenarios where the user’s hands are occupied for other interaction tasks such as washing the hair in smart shower rooms. In such scenarios, users often have to perform interactive tasks (e.g., controlling water volume) with their eyes closed when water and shampoo liquid flow along with their head to eyes area. One possible way to address this problem is to use eyes-free (rather than eyes-engaged), foot-gesture-based interactive techniques that allow users to interact with the smart shower system without visual involvement. Through our online survey, 71.60% of the participants (58/81) have the requirements of using foot-gesture-based eyes-free interactions during showers. To this end, we conducted a three-phase study to explore foot-gesture-based interaction to achieve eyes-free interaction in smart shower rooms. We first derived a set of user-defined foot gestures for eyes-free interaction in smart shower rooms. Then, we proposed a taxonomy for foot gesture interaction. Our findings indicated that end-users preferred single-foot (76.1%), atomic (73.3%), deictic (65.0%), and dynamic (76.1%) foot gestures, which markedly differs from the results reported by previous studies on user-defined hand gestures. In addition, most of the user-defined dynamic foot gestures involve atomic movements perpendicular to the ground (40.1%) or parallel to the ground (27.7%). We finally distilled a set of concrete guidelines for foot gesture interfaces based on observing end-users’ mental model and behaviors when interacting with foot gestures. Our research can inform the design and development of foot-gesture-based interaction techniques for applications such as smart homes, intelligent vehicles, VR games, and accessibility design.

Immersive Experience in Virtual Reality Horror Game

In this study, we proposed an analysis framework that examines participants' immersive experience processes from three dimensions: (1) the state of enjoyment, (2) transformation of the awareness of time, and (3) a sense of spatial integration. We found that the balance of skills and challenges is threshold factor affecting participants’ overall enjoyment state and experience of transforming the time awareness during a VR gaming process. When considering the influence of social interaction on the three dimension of enjoyment, time and space, a new emerged element of emotion connection suggests that an autotelic experience – the feel of intrinsically rewarding during the process of interacting with other partners is a threshold factor affecting participants’ overall enjoyment. Further, that the mechanism by which fear is transformed into enjoyment corresponds to the element of a sense of control in the state of flow.

Designing multi-purpose devices to enhance users’ perception of haptics

While Virtual Reality has slowly become a common sight, haptics is still struggling to appeal to the general public. We argue that one of the possible reasons is that while VR is designed to be as easily adaptable as possible to many different contexts, haptics is often designed to fulfil a specific purpose and fails to present itself as a tool that can be exploited by designers. To test our hypothesis, we created a VR game where a wrist exoskeleton was used to interact with the environment. The game was composed of multiple levels, some of which also featured a metaphorical interaction through the same haptic device, and was tested by expert haptics scholars during a conference. Preliminary results suggest that by showing multiple potential usages of an exoskeleton, it was possible to enhance users’ interest towards the haptic device and the game.

Way Back Home - An Auxiliary Teaching Tools in Biology Education in Colleges

In undergraduate biology education, especially in cell biology, it has been a challenge for students to integrate images well to memorize the complex and scattered expertise. In traditional biology teaching, the teacher's way of explaining with images is not good enough to show the connection between cell structure and function directly. Biology students need to spend long extra time to memorize these very essential points, which not only reduces students' interest in learning, but also is a very painful process for students with poor spatial imagination. However, the newly emerged VR game technology, which is visual, playful, and interactive, can be a good solution to the problem of students' interest in learning and their lack of spatial imagination. According to this situation, this paper designs a VR game as a supplementary teaching tool for cell biology and examines it from seven aspects: game mechanics, visual aesthetics, narrative, motivation, music score, learning objectives, and relevant. With using this VR game, biological related specialized student can directly see the changes in structure and remember them with pleasure, and teachers with similar teaching needs could also use them to improve learning effects. Finally, the advantages and limitations of this teaching aid are evaluated, aiming at broadening the current means of teaching undergraduate biology and providing new ideas for future higher education teaching of cell biology.

Applying Gamified VR in Teaching English Speaking as a Foreign Language in Junior High School

English becomes the universal language, which is a requirement for students to learn. According to several studies and research, the window of critical period for learner to learn is closing. Speaking as one of the parts of English skills is lack of practicing due to dozens of factors. To help students to learn speaking, effective learning theories are developed and discussed by different scholars over period of time. Many early theories are challenged by the later perspectives. To meet students’ needs, this study introduces VR technology and games to be used in teaching. As for VR, it is capable to produce an immersive environment for students to study. Besides, games motivate students to participate and actively engage in the courses. Based on the above views, the application of VR games are suggested in oral English teaching.

Using Mean Pupil Diameter Change to Analyze Behavioral Performance in Multitasking Training Game.

To explore the actual behavioral performance of subjects in multitasking training games, we designed a VR game including a Target-tracking task (TTT) of continuously moving "Player" to track "Targets" and a randomly appearing Color-discrimination task (CDT) requiring discriminating whether "Player" and "Monster" have the same color, and recorded subjects' pupillary changes to reflect mental effort. By analyzing the mean pupil diameter change (MPDC) of different groups, we found that the high group presented pupil dilation during the post-event stage, reflecting that they engaged in psychological processing of CDT during the event, whereas the low group had no pupil dilation during part of the post-event stage, reflecting the possibility of ignoring the appearance of CDT, and such behaviors hardly raise good expectations for training effect. Our study suggests that MPDC mirrors not only the actual behavior of the different groups treating the multitasking paradigm, but also the influence of game design.

Psychological and pedagogical safety of virtual games recommended for junior schoolchildren

Relevance. There is a gradual introduction of virtual reality technologies in the education of younger students in different countries. In the Russian Federation, several national projects have been announced related to the digitalization of the educational environment of educational institutions (Education project). To work with younger students, virtual programs developed in different countries that have not been tested in our country are used; when choosing programs, teachers rely on the manufacturer's label. The relevance of the study is related to the need to ensure the psychological safety of a virtual product for younger students. The purpose of the study: an expert assessment of the psychological safety of virtual games for primary school age and a comparison of the recommendations of games made by experts and manufacturers. Materials and methods. Research method: psychological and pedagogical examination of the safety of VR games. Statistical methods: Cronbach's α to assess the reliability of expertise, φ* Fisher's test for comparative analysis. Object of study: 10 VR games randomly selected for analysis, 5 games marked "for family viewing", 5 games – "for viewing with restrictions". Experts: educational psychologists, primary school teachers, parents of primary school students (2 people each). Results of the study: 1) all games were considered safe for younger students. 70% – according to the level of safety corresponds to the age norm, of which 20% of games with a level of danger below average, and 10% – above average. 30% of games have a level of danger below the age norm. 2) recommendations for the use of certain VR games in the educational environment of experts and manufacturers differed significantly (p<0.05): manufacturers recommended all 100% of the games (50% of them with restrictions), experts recommended 90% (10% – with restrictions), 10% of games – the recommendation is denied. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the need to conduct a psychological and pedagogical examination of VR games before use in the educational environment of elementary school has been empirically substantiated. There are 4 groups of risks: increased impact on the vestibular apparatus, increased impact on vision, stimulation of hyperactivity, violation of the body scheme and the emergence of a sense of vulnerability.

Data-Driven Rendering of Motion Effects for Walking Sensations in Different Gaits.

Motion effects are a vital component in 4D interactive applications, where special physical effects, such as motion, vibration, and wind, are provided with audiovisual stimuli. In 4D films and VR games, the scenes that show human locomotion appear frequently, and motion effects emphasizing such movements can enhance the viewers' immersive experiences. This paper proposes a data-driven framework for automatic generation of the motion effects that provide users with walking sensations. Measurements are made using the motion sensors attached to the human body during locomotion in different gaits, e.g., walking, running, and stumping. The captured data are processed and converted to multiple degree-of-freedom commands to a motion platform. We demonstrate that the data-driven motion commands can be represented in a greatly lower-dimensional space by principal component analysis. This finding leads to an algorithm for the synthesis of new motion commands that can elicit the target gait's walking sensations. The perceptual performance of our method is validated by two user studies. This work contributes to investigating the feasibility of mimicking walking sensations using a motion platform based on human locomotion data and developing an automatic generation algorithm of motion effects conveying the impressions of different gaits.

Adversarial Autoencoder and Multi-Armed Bandit for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in Immersive Virtual Reality for Rehabilitation: Application to Hand Movement.

Motor rehabilitation is used to improve motor control skills to improve the patient’s quality of life. Regular adjustments based on the effect of therapy are necessary, but this can be time-consuming for the clinician. This study proposes to use an efficient tool for high-dimensional data by considering a deep learning approach for dimensionality reduction of hand movement recorded using a wireless remote control embedded with the Oculus Rift S. This latent space is created as a visualization tool also for use in a reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm employed to provide a decision-making framework. The data collected consists of motions drawn with wireless remote control in an immersive VR environment for six different motions called “Cube”, “Cylinder”, “Heart”, “Infinity”, “Sphere”, and “Triangle”. From these collected data, different artificial databases were created to simulate variations of the data. A latent space representation is created using an adversarial autoencoder (AAE), taking into account unsupervised (UAAE) and semi-supervised (SSAAE) training. Then, each test point is represented by a distance metric and used as a reward for two classes of Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) algorithms, namely Boltzmann and Sibling Kalman filters. The results showed that AAE models can represent high-dimensional data in a two-dimensional latent space and that MAB agents can efficiently and quickly learn the distance evolution in the latent space. The results show that Sibling Kalman filter exploration outperforms Boltzmann exploration with an average cumulative weighted probability error of 7.9 versus 19.9 using the UAAE latent space representation and 8.0 versus 20.0 using SSAAE. In conclusion, this approach provides an effective approach to visualize and track current motor control capabilities regarding a target in order to reflect the patient’s abilities in VR games in the context of DDA.

On The 3D VR Simulated Rubik’s Cube Game for Smart Pads

In this study, interface designs of a VR 3D-simulated Rubik’s Cube game were developed and evaluated. A 2 × 2 × 2 mixed-design ANOVA was executed, with age (younger adult/older adult), interface (arrow/intuitive), and task complexity (easy, a single symmetrical task/difficult, a bio-symmetrical task) experimental design. The first three factors were between-subject designs while the latter was a within-subject design. The dependent variable was the percentage of the task performance and wayfinding questionnaire. The collected experimental data were analyzed by regression method to clarify the correlation among age, interface, task complexity, and wayfinding strategy. There were 96 subjects in the experiment, including 48 younger adults (aged from 18~22) and 48 older adults (aged from 60~85). The experimental results and statistical analysis showed that the task difficulty had a significant effect on task performance in the 3D VR Rubik’s Cube game. For the smart pad, the arrow interface was significantly more effective than the intuitive interface. The theoretical model regression analysis of the task complexity, interface, and wayfinding strategy was shown to be significant. Results showed that users may be affected either positively or negatively by the wayfinding strategy, as a higher score on familiarity indicates better VR game task performance, whereas for the usual spatial behavior wayfinding strategy, the opposite result was found for memory. These results can be used to assess VR game interface designs, taking into consideration age difference, task complexity, experiential self-report on 3D VR games, and including VR rotation navigational

Call for Papers—Ieee Transactions on Games Special Issue on User Evaluation for Vr Games

Call for Papers—Ieee Transactions on Games Special Issue on User Evaluation for Vr Games

Manga matrix's approach to creating Indonesian ghost game visual characters on Dreadeye VR

Visual imagery is the most important part of game design. Game designers should pay particular attention so that the visual character of the game can be effectively realized and able to convey the depth of its visual meanings. Taking use of the widespread fear of the Indonesian Ghost's appearance, the game is able to present challenges to its players. This study aims to develop the creation of character designs, especially by elevating visual images of Indonesian ghosts into visual characters' in-game media. The method for designing Indonesian ghost characters is to dismantle the visual image of Indonesian ghost characters in the Dreadeye VR game. The strategy is to consider the following three components: (1) the matrix of shapes, (2) the costume matrix, and (3) the matrix of traits. All three were analyzed with the approach of manga matrix theory. This research has led to the emergence of relatively distinct ghost figures that are frequently feared by Indonesians, such as pocong, kuntilanak, and tuyul. By examining the matrices of the shape, costume, and nature of each character of the three Indonesian ghosts, it is possible to conclude that to create visual characters of Indonesian ghosts, game designers must identify these three components, while the contribution of this research is to provide a visual image analysis model including shape imagery, costume imagery, and traits imagery of Indonesian ghosts used in the Dreadeye VR Game in Indonesia.

THE ROLE OF VR GAMES TO MINIMIZE THE OBESITY OF VIDEO GAMERS

Video games have become something very famous all over the world, in the past, there were only a few gamers, and becoming a gamer was something very odd to do but these days the number of gamers is increasing as it reached 2.8 billion gamers in 2021. Games are a tool for entertainment where you can spend long hours without noticing and it can lead to addiction most of the time which leads us to the main problem caused by video games which is obesity. The main cause of obesity is eating too much food and moving too little and that is what will happen when you spend a lot of time on video games. And as we all know getting an obese body will not be the only problem because obesity also causes a lot of other diseases such as heart diseases, stroke, asthma, and more.
 To solve this problem there are some recommended solutions to follow that can end this problem such as VR games which requires body movement, changing your lifestyle because a healthy lifestyle will prevent your body from diseases, educational programs that contain some physical activities for the kids in schools and finally mobile apps that motivate people to do physical activities in return of offering a prize or some amount of money.

Unexpected Vection Exacerbates Cybersickness During HMD-Based Virtual Reality

Visually induced illusions of self-motion (vection) are thought to cause cybersickness during head-mounted display based virtual reality (HMD VR). However, the empirical support for this widespread belief is rather mixed. Our exploratory study examined the possibility that only unexpected experiences of vection provoke cybersickness. Fifteen males and 15 females played an HMD VR game (Mission: ISS) for up to 14 min with: 1) their experiences of vection and cybersickness assessed every 2 minutes; and 2) the game being terminated whenever they reported feeling sick. Of the 30 participants tested, 17 reported feeling sick and 13 remained well. Sick and well participants did not differ in terms of the strength of their vection experiences. However, the sick participants were significantly more likely to report unexpected/uncontrolled vection. When these data were subjected to machine learning analysis, unexpected vection was found to be the most important predictor of cybersickness. These preliminary findings suggest that vection can be used to safely enhance experiences in HMD VR–as long as developers ensure that any simulated self-motions are expected and perceived to be under the user’s control.

785 Assessing The Kinematics Of Virtual Reality Gaming As Physical Therapy In Burn Patients

IntroductionVirtual reality (VR) gaming offers an immersive experience that can enrich physical therapy for the burn patient by introducing variability, enjoyment, and reward during functional motions of the upper extremities. In this study, we aim to support a proof-of-concept for VR gaming in upper extremity burn rehabilitation by characterizing shoulder and elbow kinematics during VR gaming in a healthy volunteer.MethodsA healthy volunteer without burn injuries played two games, a virtual rhythmic baton and virtual boxing game, on a commercially available VR gaming platform. Kinematics during play were assessed using two external cameras placed orthogonally, to the player’s front and left, so that 3-dimensional motion of the player’s left arm could be captured. Video of each gaming session was processed using an open-source perceptual computing software that dynamically tracks the user’s upper extremity during play. Kinematics at the left shoulder and elbow were characterized with respect to range of motion (ROM) and time spent in composite positions.ResultsDuring the rhythmic baton game, the player achieved 157 degrees of elbow flexion ROM and 90 degrees shoulder elevation ROM. During the boxing game, the player achieved 156 degrees of elbow flexion ROM and 123 degrees shoulder elevation ROM. The baton game was associated with more time spent in the “rest” position (elbow extended with shoulder adducted, 60% of the game) while boxing was associated with more time in the “Guard” position (elbow flexed with shoulder elevated, 79% of the game) (Figure 1). Both games demonstrated simultaneous movement at both the shoulder and elbow during play.ConclusionsThe two VR games investigated in this kinematic assessment challenged players to achieve a wide range of motion at the upper extremity with functional, multi-joint movements. These findings support a potential role for commercial VR gaming in burn rehabilitation and future research in burn patients is required to demonstrate its therapeutic value.

Efficacy of the Virtual Reality Intervention VR FestLab on Alcohol Refusal Self-Efficacy: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial.

It is currently unknown whether a virtual social environment can support young people in building their skills to overcome peer pressure when offered alcohol. This study evaluated the efficacy of the newly developed virtual reality simulation game VR FestLab on the refusal self-efficacy regarding social pressures to drink of Danish male and female students aged 15–18. VR FestLab features a party setting where adolescents can “steer” their own party experience. Eleven schools were included in a cluster-randomized controlled trial and allocated to either the intervention (n = 181) or the active control group (n = 191). Students in intervention schools played VR FestLab, while those in the control group played the VR game Oculus Quest—First Steps. The primary outcome measure was the social pressure subscale of the drinking refusal self-efficacy scale (DRSEQ-RA). The intervention effects were measured immediately after the intervention/control session (T1) and after a 6-week follow-up (T2). Data were examined using linear mixed regression models. Our study did not demonstrate a significant effect of drinking refusal self-efficacy at T1. For all secondary outcomes, we observed no substantial differences between the intervention and control groups. This study provides new insights into the feasibility and effectiveness of an innovative virtual reality alcohol prevention tool. VR FestLab can be an innovative and promising contribution to complement existing school-based alcohol prevention, but more research is needed to improve its effectiveness.

A cross-cultural analysis of VR gaming psychological needs and motivations: a self-determination theory approach

ABSTRACT Purpose: Grounded in self-determination theory, this study examined whether the virtual reality gaming experience meets individuals’ psychological needs and develops their interest in VR sports games. Research methods: The authors conducted an exploratory study to examine video gamers’ motivation for playing VR games using interviews with 29 participants from the U.S. and Nigeria. Results and findings: The study found that most participants had two psychological needs met, namely competence and autonomy, while relatedness was not found. The participants demonstrated intrinsic motivation, as they expressed an interest to play VR games or to use a VR headset in the future. However, their current motivation status, in terms of their interest in purchasing a VR headset, can be qualified as identified regulation. Immersive experience was also found to be a major theme. Comparing Nigerian and U.S. participants, the Nigerians experienced dual learning curves. A few Nigerian participants indicated that they felt controlled by an external source in the game, while the U.S. participants were frustrated due to the limited controllable options available in the game. Some Nigerian participants also felt as if they were interacting with computer-driven characters. Implications: This study extends the research in this area and provides practical implications for various stakeholders involved in VR gaming technology.

MPose: Environment- and subject-agnostic 3D skeleton posture reconstruction leveraging a single mmWave device

Human skeleton posture reconstruction is an essential component for human–computer interactions (HCI) in various application domains. Traditional approaches usually rely on either cameras or on-body sensors, which induce privacy concerns or inconvenient practical setups. To address these practical concerns, this paper proposes a low-cost contactless skeleton posture reconstruction system, mPose , which can reconstruct a user’s 3D skeleton postures using a single mmWave device. mPose does not require the user to wear any sensors and can enable a broad range of emerging mobile applications (e.g., VR gaming and pervasive user input) via mmWave-5G ready Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Particularly, the system extracts multi-dimensional spatial information from mmWave signals which characterizes the skeleton postures in a 3D space. To mitigate the impacts of environmental changes, mPose dynamically detects the user location and extracts spatial features from the mmWave signals reflected only from the user. Furthermore, we develop a deep regression method with a domain discriminator to learn a mapping between the spatial features and the joint coordinates of human body while removing subject-specific characteristics, realizing robust posture reconstruction across users. Extensive experiments, involving 17 representative body postures, 7 subjects, and 3 indoor environments, show that mPose outperforms contemporary state-of-the-art RF-based solutions with a lower average joint error of only ∼ 30 mm, while achieving transferability across environments and subjects at the same time.

Embodied parallelism and immersion in virtual reality gaming

This article argues that virtual reality produces a sense of immersion through embodied parallelism – a technical mediation in which the embodied gestures and movements of a player must correspond to what is represented within a VR game, a correspondence which relies on, but exceeds the visual and requires strange requirements for both player (in terms of their gestures and movements) and game (in terms of including particular limits that police the movements of the player’s body). Attending to embodied parallelism refuses several longstanding assumptions about how virtual reality technologies, and media in general, generate the feeling of immersion – namely, the idea that immersion ‘disembodies’ in some way, or denies the existence of physical space beyond the boundary of a mediated simulation. Immersivity is premised on an explicit engagement with – and not exclusion of – both the physicality of the body and the physicality of a medium, if in deeply contradictory ways. As a case study to develop this concept, this article discusses the emerging virtual reality genre of ‘physics games’, games including, but not limited to, Blade & Sorcery, Boneworks and Half-Life: Alyx. These games take great lengths to simulate the physics of objects – they require simultaneously intrusive and yet ‘natural’ interfaces, in which the game demands the body to move as if it were manipulating objects that have a specific mass. Becoming ‘good’ at these games depends on the ability to discipline the body and conform to the demands of movement required by the simulation. Immersion, in this context, depends on a willingness to submit to these machinic, embodied demands, relying both explicitly on technical form but deliberately forgetting the materiality of gesture and mediation at the same time. This seeming contradiction, an engagement with both the materiality of gesture and the materiality of medium, is ‘solved’ through embodied parallelism and how it links player and game.

Cybersickness and postural stability of first time VR users playing VR videogames

This study investigated symptoms of cybersickness and postural instability experienced by new users of head-mounted display virtual reality (HMD-VR), playing VR videogames over long and repeated sessions, and moderation of these symptoms by previous videogame experience and intensity of videogame stimulus.Cybersickness (SSQ) and postural stability (anterior-posterior path-velocity) of new users of VR (n = 80) was collected PRE-VR, POST-VR and 10 min after completing (POST-RECOVERY) a VR gaming experience. Users comprised of videogamers (n = 40) and non-videogamers (n = 40), who were randomly assigned to play either action (high-intensity stimuli) or adventure (low-intensity stimuli) games in VR for 30 min and repeated twice, one week apart.All participants, irrespective of gaming status and genre of game, experienced significant cybersickness after 30 min in VR using current-generation HMD-VR technology, and did not adapt (POST-VR) after two sessions. However videogamers were able to recover (POST-RECOVERY) from cybersickness induced in VR significantly better than non-videogamers.All participants experienced significantly better postural stability after 30 min in VR, irrespective of gaming experience or genre of game.Developers should create VR experiences that minimise negative symptoms of cybersickness and postural instability experience by new users of VR.