G. Bente, Ralf Schmälzle, Nolan T. Jahn, A. Schaaf
{"title":"Measuring the effects of co-location on emotion perception in shared virtual environments: An ecological perspective","authors":"G. Bente, Ralf Schmälzle, Nolan T. Jahn, A. Schaaf","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1032510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1032510","url":null,"abstract":"Inferring emotions from others’ non-verbal behavior is a pervasive and fundamental task in social interactions. Typically, real-life encounters imply the co-location of interactants, i.e., their embodiment within a shared spatial-temporal continuum in which the trajectories of the interaction partner’s Expressive Body Movement (EBM) create mutual social affordances. Shared Virtual Environments (SVEs) and Virtual Characters (VCs) are increasingly used to study social perception, allowing to reconcile experimental stimulus control with ecological validity. However, it remains unclear whether display modalities that enable co-presence have an impact on observers responses to VCs’ expressive behaviors. Drawing upon ecological approaches to social perception, we reasoned that sharing the space with a VC should amplify affordances as compared to a screen display, and consequently alter observers’ perceptions of EBM in terms of judgment certainty, hit rates, perceived expressive qualities (arousal and valence), and resulting approach and avoidance tendencies. In a between-subject design, we compared the perception of 54 10-s animations of VCs performing three daily activities (painting, mopping, sanding) in three emotional states (angry, happy, sad)—either displayed in 3D as a co-located VC moving in shared space, or as a 2D replay on a screen that was also placed in the SVEs. Results confirm the effective experimental control of the variable of interest, showing that perceived co-presence was significantly affected by the display modality, while perceived realism and immersion showed no difference. Spatial presence and social presence showed marginal effects. Results suggest that the display modality had a minimal effect on emotion perception. A weak effect was found for the expression “happy,” for which unbiased hit rates were higher in the 3D condition. Importantly, low hit rates were observed for all three emotion categories. However, observers judgments significantly correlated for category assignment and across all rating dimensions, indicating universal decoding principles. While category assignment was erroneous, though, ratings of valence and arousal were consistent with expectations derived from emotion theory. The study demonstrates the value of animated VCs in emotion perception studies and raises new questions regarding the validity of category-based emotion recognition measures.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46240530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nicolas Delcombel, Thierry Duval, Marc-Oliver Pahl
{"title":"Cybercopters Swarm: Immersive analytics for alerts classification based on periodic data","authors":"Nicolas Delcombel, Thierry Duval, Marc-Oliver Pahl","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1156656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1156656","url":null,"abstract":"This paper assesses the usefulness of an interactive and navigable 3D environment to help decision-making in cybersecurity. Malware programs frequently emit periodic signals in network logs; however, normal periodical network activities, such as software updates and data collection activities, mask them. Thus, if automatic systems use periodicity to successfully detect malware, they also detect ordinary activities as suspicious ones and raise false positives. Hence, there is a need to provide tools to sort the alerts raised by such software. Data visualizations can make it easier to categorize these alerts, as proven by previous research. However, traditional visualization tools can struggle to display a large amount of data that needs to be treated in cybersecurity in a clear way. In response, this paper explores the use of Immersive Analytics to interact with complex dataset representations and collect cues for alert classification. We created a prototype that uses a helical representation to underline periodicity in the distribution of one variable of a dataset. We tested this prototype in an alert triage scenario and compared it with a state-of-the-art 2D visualization with regard to the visualization efficiency, usability, workload, and flow induced.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45648529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The design, experiment, analyse, and reproduce principle for experimentation in virtual reality","authors":"Jascha Grübel","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1069423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1069423","url":null,"abstract":"Conducting experiments in virtual reality (VR) requires a complex setup of hardware, software, experiment design and implementation, and data collection which is supported by frameworks that provide pre-determined features for scientists to implement their experiment in VR. These VR frameworks have proliferated exponentially since the start of the millennia, and unfortunately, they both only differ slightly from one another and often miss one or more of the key features required by the researcher. Therefore, it has become less clear to researchers which framework to choose for what task and to what benefit. I introduce the design, experiment, analyse, and reproduce (DEAR) principle to develop a new perspective on VR frameworks through a holistic approach to experimentation (i.e., the process of conducting an experiment). The DEAR principle lays out the core components that future frameworks should entail. Most previous VR frameworks have focussed on the design phase and sometimes on the experiment phase to help researchers create and conduct experiments. However, being able to create an experiment with a framework is not sufficient for wide adoption. Ultimately, I argue that it is important to take reproducibility seriously to overcome the limitations of current frameworks. Once experiments are fully reproducible through automation, the adaptation of new experiments becomes easier. Hopefully, researchers can find ways to converge in the use of frameworks or else frameworks may become a hindrance instead of a help.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49462398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zhu Chang, Huidong Bai, Li Zhang, Kunal Gupta, Weiping He, M. Billinghurst
{"title":"Corrigendum: The impact of virtual agents’ multimodal communication on brain activity and cognitive load in Virtual Reality","authors":"Zhu Chang, Huidong Bai, Li Zhang, Kunal Gupta, Weiping He, M. Billinghurst","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1194313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1194313","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47195334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cristina Gil-López, J. Guixeres, J. Marín-Morales, Carmen Torrecilla, Edu Williams, M. Alcañiz
{"title":"Is mixed reality technology an effective tool for retail? A vividness and interaction perspective","authors":"Cristina Gil-López, J. Guixeres, J. Marín-Morales, Carmen Torrecilla, Edu Williams, M. Alcañiz","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1067932","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1067932","url":null,"abstract":"There is increasing interest in studies analyzing the influence of technologies that integrate virtual and real-world components on consumer behavior. These technologies include augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality. Mixed reality is a user environment in which physical reality and digital content are combined in a way that enables interaction with and among real-world and virtual objects. In spite of previous works related with MR and retails spaces, little is known about how consumers respond to MR features and which elements of the MR-based experience, such as vividness and novelty, impact behavior. In this study, we have explored the relative advantage of mixed reality in retail shopping practices over a traditional-based purchase. Implicit reactions of shoppers when interacting with products with and without MR glasses were compared. The results reveal that participants wearing MR glasses exhibited different patterns of interaction (i.e., frequency and interaction with product duration) that differed from those indicated by participants who did not wear the MR technology. At the level of purchase decision, our results show that the use of MR smart glasses has an impact on decision times that relates to a utilitarian purchase type. Based on participants’ explicit answers to questionnaires, the reported findings further show that the perceived hedonic and utilitarian values of the purchase experience were higher when MR was used, which also affected future purchase intentions and perceived emotional state as reported by consumers’ experience and satisfaction in the context of retail.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45666222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public participation in urban design with augmented reality technology based on indicator evaluation","authors":"Yuchen Wang, Yin Lin","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1071355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1071355","url":null,"abstract":"Decision-making processes in traditional urban design approaches are mainly top-down. Such processes have defects including not only taking a long time to examine design results but also leading to irreversible impacts after design implementation. Policymakers and researchers stress the importance of collaborating with different stakeholders in the process of urban design policy and guideline making in order to minimize these negative impacts. However, introducing public participation into urban design from the bottom up is challenging, especially when the process involves abstract urban design concepts such as indicators. This paper explores a new workflow aimed at enhancing public participation to cooperate in urban design work with the help of a newly designed platform tool powered by mobile augmented-reality technologies. The platform is intuitive to use and displays scenes of potential urban design results by superimposing the virtual models onto real-world environments on mobile devices. The public stakeholders are provided with this platform on-site to evaluate the initial values of urban design indicators by interacting with the prototype design along with an immersive experience. They can also grow familiar with the concepts of the given indicators during this process, which helps them better understand the implications of guidelines in future published urban design drafts and estimate the potential results. Their feedback is collected, which can help urban designers further optimize the indicators in urban design guideline making in order to improve their rationality. This process of urban design involving public participation is repeatable, which makes it possible to continuously adjust the design results. A user study was conducted to examine the platform’s usability and its ability to enhance public familiarity with the concepts of given indicators and their willingness to participate in urban design evaluation. The study also attests to the possibility of a workflow that integrates public feedback with the urban design process.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43424446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Design-thinking skill enhancement in virtual reality: A literature study","authors":"Qiner Lyu, Kentaro Watanabe, Hiroyuki Umemura, Akihiko Murai","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1137293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1137293","url":null,"abstract":"As a methodology, design thinking involves practicing “a way of thinking” that non-designers can use as a source of inspiration instead being limited to a group of professional designers. This methodology has gained research attention because of the growing demands for social innovation and sustainability. The general public is expected to gain design-thinking skills through training or by applying design-thinking tools. Virtual reality (VR) is considered a potential tool to help accelerate augmenting design-thinking skills because it allows users to have embodied and immersive experiences. This study reviews existing literature on how VR has been used to enhance design-thinking skills. The general features of the publications such as the year of publication, design-thinking stages, VR types, targeted participants, and publication fields are analyzed for determining the latest trends and scenarios under this research topic. Further, a thematic analysis that follows creative enhancement structures is conducted to understand the role of VR in enhancing design-thinking skills, and future research directions are discussed based on the results. The review concludes that VR has the potential to enhance creativity in many aspects. Moreover, it highlights the need of gaining deeper understanding about 1) art, humanities, and societal perspectives; 2) cognition processes in VR; 3) emphasizing and defining stages in the design-thinking process; 4) technological improvements combined with the Metaverse; and 5) hybrid of the virtual and real worlds.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48922255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Lukacs, Mathias Babin, J. Dickey, C. Melling, D. Walton
{"title":"Development and tolerability of a novel virtual- and proprioception-based car crash simulator as a new research tool in motor vehicle trauma research","authors":"M. Lukacs, Mathias Babin, J. Dickey, C. Melling, D. Walton","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.891423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.891423","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose: Investigations of causal theories of neck pain (NP) following motor vehicle crashes (MVC) has been difficult, as simulation is limited. Thus, we sought to evaluate tolerability to a novel virtual reality (VR)-based road collision simulator and screen for adverse reactions. Materials and Methods: Cross-sectional study. 25 healthy participants were exposed to a novel VR-based rear-end MVC with a small perturbation (0.2 g). The Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) and Presence Questionnaire (PQ) were measured post-exposure and adverse reactions were recorded. Results: The system was well tolerated with no adverse reactions, however one participant reported NP the following day not lasting longer than 48 h. Participants reported low levels of simulator sickness (mean SSQ = 23.49 ± 21.98, range = 0.00 to 89.76; max score = 235.62), while presence (mean PQ = 91.04 ± 14.08, range = 54.00 to 112.00; max score = 133), was lower than literature recommendations. Conclusion: A VR-based road collision simulator can be safely used to explore the phenomenon of a motor vehicle crashes under controlled circumstances. Future work is needed to optimize the virtual reality environment and to investigate the effects of crash parameters.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46736741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Daniel Schwajda, Judith Friedl, Fabian Pointecker, Hans-Christian Jetter, C. Anthes
{"title":"Transforming graph data visualisations from 2D displays into augmented reality 3D space: A quantitative study","authors":"Daniel Schwajda, Judith Friedl, Fabian Pointecker, Hans-Christian Jetter, C. Anthes","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1155628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1155628","url":null,"abstract":"Modern video-based head-mounted displays allow users to operate along Milgram’s entire reality-virtuality continuum. This opens up the field for novel cross-reality applications that distribute data analytics tasks along this continuum to combine benefits of established 2D information visualisation in the real environment with immersive analytics. In this publication, we explore this potential by transforming 2D graph data from a planar, large-scale display in the real environment into a spherical layout in augmented reality 3D space, letting it appear as if the graph is moving out of the display. We focus on design aspects of this transformation that potentially help users to form a joint mental model of both visualisations and to continue their tasks seamlessly in augmented reality. For this purpose, we implemented a framework of transformation parameters that can be categorised as follows: transformation methods, node transformation order (groupings) and different ways of visual interconnection. Variants in each of these areas were investigated in three quantitative user studies in which users had to solve a simple cluster search task. We confirmed that a visual transformation from 2D to 3D helps users to continue their tasks in augmented reality with less interruptions, and that node transformation order should be adjusted to data and task context. We further identified that users can perform tasks more efficiently when a user-controlled transformation is used, while a constant transformation with fixed duration can contribute to lower error rates.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45928774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
D. Harris, T. Arthur, J. Kearse, M. Olonilua, E. K. Hassan, T. de Burgh, M. Wilson, S. Vine
{"title":"Exploring the role of virtual reality in military decision training","authors":"D. Harris, T. Arthur, J. Kearse, M. Olonilua, E. K. Hassan, T. de Burgh, M. Wilson, S. Vine","doi":"10.3389/frvir.2023.1165030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2023.1165030","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction: Simulation methods, including physical synthetic environments, already play a substantial role in human skills training in many industries. One example is their application to developing situational awareness and judgemental skills in defence and security personnel. The rapid development of virtual reality technologies has provided a new opportunity for performing this type of training, but before VR can be adopted as part of mandatory training it should be subjected to rigorous tests of its suitability and effectiveness. Methods: In this work, we adopted established methods for testing the fidelity and validity of simulated environments to compare three different methods of training use-of-force decision making. Thirty-nine dismounted close combat troops from the UK’s Royal Air Force completed shoot/don’t-shoot judgemental tasks in: i) live fire; ii) virtual reality; and iii) 2D video simulation conditions. A range of shooting accuracy and decision-making metrics were recorded from all three environments. Results: The results showed that 2D video simulation posed little decision-making challenge during training. Decision-making performance across live fire and virtual reality simulations was comparable but the two may offer slightly different, and perhaps complementary, methods of training judgemental skills. Discussion: Different types of simulation should, therefore, be selected carefully to address the exact training need.","PeriodicalId":73116,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in virtual reality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48975354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}