18 research outputs found

    Challenges and Strategies for Educational Virtual Reality

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    Virtual reality (VR) is a rich visualization and analytic platform that furthers the library’s mission of providing access to all forms of information and supporting pedagogy and scholarship across disciplines. Academic libraries are increasingly adopting VR technology for a variety of research and teaching purposes, which include providing enhanced access to digital collections, offering new research tools, and constructing new immersive learning environments for students. This trend suggests that positive technological innovation is flourishing in libraries, but there remains a lack of clear guidance in the library community on how to introduce these technologies in effective ways and make them sustainable within different types of institutions. In June 2018, the University of Oklahoma hosted the second of three forums on the use of 3D and VR for visualization and analysis in academic libraries, as part of the project Developing Library Strategy for 3D and Virtual Reality Collection Development and Reuse(LIB3DVR), funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This qualitative study invited experts from a range of disciplines and sectors to identify common challenges in the visualization and analysis of 3D data, and the management of VR programs, for the purpose of developing a national library strategy

    Enhancing our lives with immersive virtual reality

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    Virtual reality (VR) started about 50 years ago in a form we would recognize today [stereo head-mounted display (HMD), head tracking, computer graphics generated images] – although the hardware was completely different. In the 1980s and 1990s, VR emerged again based on a different generation of hardware (e.g., CRT displays rather than vector refresh, electromagnetic tracking instead of mechanical). This reached the attention of the public, and VR was hailed by many engineers, scientists, celebrities, and business people as the beginning of a new era, when VR would soon change the world for the better. Then, VR disappeared from public view and was rumored to be “dead.” In the intervening 25 years a huge amount of research has nevertheless been carried out across a vast range of applications – from medicine to business, from psychotherapy to industry, from sports to travel. Scientists, engineers, and people working in industry carried on with their research and applications using and exploring different forms of VR, not knowing that actually the topic had already passed away. The purpose of this article is to survey a range of VR applications where there is some evidence for, or at least debate about, its utility, mainly based on publications in peer-reviewed journals. Of course not every type of application has been covered, nor every scientific paper (about 186,000 papers in Google Scholar): in particular, in this review we have not covered applications in psychological or medical rehabilitation. The objective is that the reader becomes aware of what has been accomplished in VR, where the evidence is weaker or stronger, and what can be done. We start in Section 1 with an outline of what VR is and the major conceptual framework used to understand what happens when people experience it – the concept of “presence.” In Section 2, we review some areas where VR has been used in science – mostly psychology and neuroscience, the area of scientific visualization, and some remarks about its use in education and surgical training. In Section 3, we discuss how VR has been used in sports and exercise. In Section 4, we survey applications in social psychology and related areas – how VR has been used to throw light on some social phenomena, and how it can be used to tackle experimentally areas that cannot be studied experimentally in real life. We conclude with how it has been used in the preservation of and access to cultural heritage. In Section 5, we present the domain of moral behavior, including an example of how it might be used to train professionals such as medical doctors when confronting serious dilemmas with patients. In Section 6, we consider how VR has been and might be used in various aspects of travel, collaboration, and industry. In Section 7, we consider mainly the use of VR in news presentation and also discuss different types of VR. In the concluding Section 8, we briefly consider new ideas that have recently emerged – an impossible task since during the short time we have written this page even newer ideas have emerged! And, we conclude with some general considerations and speculations. Throughout and wherever possible we have stressed novel applications and approaches and how the real power of VR is not necessarily to produce a faithful reproduction of “reality” but rather that it offers the possibility to step outside of the normal bounds of reality and realize goals in a totally new and unexpected way. We hope that our article will provoke readers to think as paradigm changers, and advance VR to realize different worlds that might have a positive impact on the lives of millions of people worldwide, and maybe even help a little in saving the planet

    A Comparative Study of Desktop, Fishtank, and Cave Systems for the Exploration of Volume Rendered Confocal Data Sets

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    We present a participant study that compares biological data exploration tasks using volume renderings of laser confocal microscopy data across three environments that vary in level of immersion: a desktop, fishtank, and cave system. For the tasks, data, and visualization approach used in our study, we found that subjects qualitatively preferred and quantitatively performed better in the cave compared with the fishtank and desktop. Subjects performed real-world biological data analysis tasks that emphasized understanding spatial relationships including characterizing the general features in a volume, identifying colocated features, and reporting geometric relationships such as whether clusters of cells were coplanar. After analyzing data in each environment, subjects were asked to choose which environment they wanted to analyze additional data sets in - subjects uniformly selected the cave environment

    An open source framework for CAVE automatic virtual environments

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    A CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) is a 3D interactive environment that enables a user to be fully immersed in a virtual world and offers a unique way to visualise and interact with digital information. The primary goal of this thesis is to report on the development of a new open source CAVE software framework that provides greater access to both professional and amateur CAVE environments to users of all levels. In the first part of this thesis, the history and evolution of virtual environments as well as the generic affordances of the modern day CAVE are characterised. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the factors that influence immersion, the different methods and devices of interaction, and a small project to develop a CAVE specific interaction device is described. In the second part of this thesis, the focus is on novel work to develop a new open source platform for CAVE environments and the implementation of this platform in the visualisation of real-world sensor data. This data is collected from a range of residential and educational buildings across a local community and is used in support of an ongoing ‘smart energy’ project which is also described in detail. In conclusion, this thesis argues that through the development of new, easy-to-use, open source software and the ongoing reduction in key hardware technology costs, CAVE environments can be an effective and affordable visualisation tool for both experienced and novice users. The CAVE environment need no longer remain the sole preserve of well-funded educational and business organisations. Rather, through technology innovations such as proposed in this work, the era of the much vaunted low-cost CAVE is ‘virtually’ upon us

    Visualization and Analysis Tools for Neuronal Tissue

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    The complex nature of neuronal cellular and circuit structure poses challenges for understanding tissue organization. New techniques in electron microscopy allow for large datasets to be acquired from serial sections of neuronal tissue. These techniques reveal all cells in an unbiased fashion, so their segmentation produces complex structures that must be inspected and analyzed. Although several software packages provide 3D representations of these structures, they are limited to monoscopic projection, and are tailored to the visualization of generic 3D data. On the other hand, stereoscopic display has been shown to improve the immersive experience, with significant gains in understanding spatial relationships and identifying important features. To leverage those benefits, we have developed a 3D immersive virtual reality data display system that besides presenting data visually allows augmenting and interacting with them in a form that facilitates human analysis.;To achieve a useful system for neuroscientists, we have developed the BrainTrek system, which is a suite of software applications suited for the organization, rendering, visualization, and modification of neuron model scenes. A middle cost point CAVE system provides high vertex count rendering of an immersive 3D environment. A standard head- and wand-tracking allows movement control and modification of the scene via the on-screen, 3D menu, while a tablet touch screen provides multiple navigation modes and a 2D menu. Graphic optimization provides theoretically limitless volumes to be presented and an on-screen mini-map allows users to quickly orientate themselves. A custom voice note-taking mechanism has been installed, allowing scenes to be described and revisited. Finally, ray-casting support allows numerous analytical features, including 3D distance and volume measurements, computation and presentation of statistics, and point-and-click retrieval and presentation of raw electron microscopy data. The extension of this system to the Unity3D platform provides a low-cost alternative to the CAVE. This allows users to visualize, explore, and annotate 3D cellular data in multiple platforms and modalities, ranging from different operating systems, different hardware platforms (e.g., tablets, PCs, or stereo head-mounted displays), to operating in an online or off-line fashion. Such approach has the potential to not only address visualization and analysis needs of neuroscientists, but also to become a tool for educational purposes, as well as for crowdsourcing upcoming needs for sheer amounts of neuronal data annotation

    Drumming in immersive virtual reality: the body shapes the way we play

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    It has been shown that it is possible to generate perceptual illusions of ownership in immersive virtual reality (IVR) over a virtual body seen from first person perspective, in other words over a body that visually substitutes the person's real body. This can occur even when the virtual body is quite different in appearance from the person's real body. However, investigation of the psychological, behavioral and attitudinal consequences of such body transformations remains an interesting problem with much to be discovered. Thirty six Caucasian people participated in a between-groups experiment where they played a West-African Djembe hand drum while immersed in IVR and with a virtual body that substituted their own. The virtual hand drum was registered with a physical drum. They were alongside a virtual character that played a drum in a supporting, accompanying role. In a baseline condition participants were represented only by plainly shaded white hands, so that they were able merely to play. In the experimental condition they were represented either by a casually dressed dark-skinned virtual body (Casual Dark-Skinned - CD) or by a formal suited light-skinned body (Formal Light-Skinned - FL). Although participants of both groups experienced a strong body ownership illusion towards the virtual body, only those with the CD representation showed significant increases in their movement patterns for drumming compared to the baseline condition and compared with those embodied in the FL body. Moreover, the stronger the illusion of body ownership in the CD condition, the greater this behavioral change. A path analysis showed that the observed behavioral changes were a function of the strength of the illusion of body ownership towards the virtual body and its perceived appropriateness for the drumming task. These results demonstrate that full body ownership illusions can lead to substantial behavioral and possibly cognitive changes depending on the appearance of the virtual body. This could be important for many applications such as learning, education, training, psychotherapy and rehabilitation using IVR
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