VR.net: A Real-world Dataset for Virtual Reality Motion Sickness Research

Researchers have used machine learning approaches to identify motion sickness in VR experience. These approaches demand an accurately-labeled, real-world, and diverse dataset for high accuracy and generalizability. As a starting point to address this need, we introduce `VR.net', a dataset offering approximately 12-hour gameplay videos from ten real-world games in 10 diverse genres. For each video frame, a rich set of motion sickness-related labels, such as camera/object movement, depth field, and motion flow, are accurately assigned. Building such a dataset is challenging since manual labeling would require an infeasible amount of time. Instead, we utilize a tool to automatically and precisely extract ground truth data from 3D engines' rendering pipelines without accessing VR games' source code. We illustrate the utility of VR.net through several applications, such as risk factor detection and sickness level prediction. We continuously expand VR.net and envision its next version offering 10X more data than the current form. We believe that the scale, accuracy, and diversity of VR.net can offer unparalleled opportunities for VR motion sickness research and beyond

Cybersickness as a virtual reality side effect : a retrospective study

Trabalho Final do Curso de Mestrado Integrado em Medicina, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, 2022Numa nova era acompanhada com a restrição pandémica que vivemos face à COVID-19, a indústria da realidade virtual beneficiou com uma maior procura por parte dos utilizadores em fugir à sua própria realidade para um mundo imersivo, um mundo por explorar, sem sair das suas próprias casas. Não só para usufruto pessoal em entretenimento, a realidade virtual é, hoje em dia, uma nova ferramenta que evolui a cada dia que passa, sobretudo na área Medicina na sua prática e no seu ensino (cirurgias laparoscópicas e outras técnicas cirúrgicas, encurtar curvas de aprendizagem, ensino da anatomia, tratamento de perturbações e doenças psiquiátricas). Uma das limitações mais importantes ao uso da realidade virtual, passa pela doença do movimento, que neste contexto é denominada de “cybersickness”. Esta condição limitante não é mais do que o enjoo de movimento em ambientes imersivos estacionários, especialmente em realidade virtual gerada por computadores e ecrãs montados na cabeça, sem movimento real. Sendo uma limitação importante ao uso da realidade virtual, é importante identificar padrões que aumentem estes efeitos não desejados e de alguma forma trabalhar neles, para que sejam o menos limitante possível. Este estudo retrospetivo foi realizado através de um questionário online, distribuído por várias plataformas utilizando dois grandes questionários certificados nesta área. O principal objetivo é quantificar a prevalência e o grau de sintomas de doença de movimento em utilizadores saudáveis do Oculus Quest 2, um ecrã montado na cabeça, em diferentes posições, desequilíbrio de género na suscetibilidade à doença do movimento e também determinar fatores predisponentes ou potenciais de risco que possam contribuir para ela, utilizando como base o jogo "Epic Roller Coasters". Foi possível encontrar uma relação estatisticamente significativa entre a predisposição, género feminino, a posição de pé, a frequência e o tempo de jogo. Não foi possível relacionar o fator idade com os sintomas de enjoo de movimento reportados. Estes resultados são importantes para que, em estudos no futuro ou na aplicabilidade da realidade virtual, sejam incluídos estes fatores que potenciam os efeitos adversos, em todos os contextos.In a new era, accompanied with the pandemic restriction we are living in the face of COVID-19, the virtual reality industry has benefited from a greater demand by users to escape their own reality to an immersive world, a world to explore without leaving their own homes. Not only for personal use in entertainment, virtual reality is nowadays a new tool that evolves every day, especially in medicine in its practice and teaching (laparoscopic surgeries and other surgical techniques, shortening learning curves, teaching anatomy, treating psychiatric disorders and diseases). One of the most important limitations to the use of virtual reality is Motion Sickness, which in this context is called cybersickness. This limiting condition is nothing but MS in stationary immersive environments, especially in virtual reality generated by computers and head-mounted displays, without real movement. Being an important limitation to the use of virtual reality, it is important to identify patterns that increase these unwanted effects and somehow work on them to make them as less limiting as possible. This retrospective study was conducted through an online questionnaire, distributed across several platforms using two large certified questionnaires in this area. Its main objective is to quantify the prevalence and degree of motion sickness symptoms in healthy VR users of Oculus Quest 2, a head mounted display, in different positions (sitting down vs standing up), as gender imbalance in the susceptibility to simulator sickness and as well as determining predisposing or potential risk factors that may contribute to it using the game "Epic Roller Coasters" as basis. It was possible to find a statistically significant relationship between predisposition, female gender, standing position, frequency and time of playing. It was not possible to relate the Age factor with the reported symptoms of Motion Sickness. These results are important so that in future studies or in the applicability of virtual reality, these factors that potentiate adverse effects should be included, in all contexts

Achieving efficient real-time virtual reality architectural visualisation

Master'sMASTER OF ARTS (ARCHITECTURE

Exploring Robot Teleoperation in Virtual Reality

This thesis presents research on VR-based robot teleoperation with a focus on remote environment visualisation in virtual reality, the effects of remote environment reconstruction scale in virtual reality on the human-operator's ability to control the robot and human-operator's visual attention patterns when teleoperating a robot from virtual reality. A VR-based robot teleoperation framework was developed, it is compatible with various robotic systems and cameras, allowing for teleoperation and supervised control with any ROS-compatible robot and visualisation of the environment through any ROS-compatible RGB and RGBD cameras. The framework includes mapping, segmentation, tactile exploration, and non-physically demanding VR interface navigation and controls through any Unity-compatible VR headset and controllers or haptic devices. Point clouds are a common way to visualise remote environments in 3D, but they often have distortions and occlusions, making it difficult to accurately represent objects' textures. This can lead to poor decision-making during teleoperation if objects are inaccurately represented in the VR reconstruction. A study using an end-effector-mounted RGBD camera with OctoMap mapping of the remote environment was conducted to explore the remote environment with fewer point cloud distortions and occlusions while using a relatively small bandwidth. Additionally, a tactile exploration study proposed a novel method for visually presenting information about objects' materials in the VR interface, to improve the operator's decision-making and address the challenges of point cloud visualisation. Two studies have been conducted to understand the effect of virtual world dynamic scaling on teleoperation flow. The first study investigated the use of rate mode control with constant and variable mapping of the operator's joystick position to the speed (rate) of the robot's end-effector, depending on the virtual world scale. The results showed that variable mapping allowed participants to teleoperate the robot more effectively but at the cost of increased perceived workload. The second study compared how operators used a virtual world scale in supervised control, comparing the virtual world scale of participants at the beginning and end of a 3-day experiment. The results showed that as operators got better at the task they as a group used a different virtual world scale, and participants' prior video gaming experience also affected the virtual world scale chosen by operators. Similarly, the human-operator's visual attention study has investigated how their visual attention changes as they become better at teleoperating a robot using the framework. The results revealed the most important objects in the VR reconstructed remote environment as indicated by operators' visual attention patterns as well as their visual priorities shifts as they got better at teleoperating the robot. The study also demonstrated that operators’ prior video gaming experience affects their ability to teleoperate the robot and their visual attention behaviours

Collaborative Work Enabled by Immersive Environments

Digital transformation facilitates new methods for remote collaboration while shaping a new understanding of working together. In this chapter, we consider global collaboration in the context of digital transformation, discuss the role of Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) within the transformation process, present an overview of the state of CVEs and go into more detail on significant challenges in CVEs by providing recent approaches from research

Digital Factory and Virtual Reality: Teaching Virtual Reality Principles with Game Engines

Virtual reality (VR) is widely used in various industrial applications. All leading industrial manufacturing companies today have a strategy called the ‘concept of a digital factory’ where all aspects of manufacturing are digitally verified on digital mock-ups prior to physical manufacturing. Other than that, it is a rapidly developing new medium and further development of VR and IT will open up new possibilities. The new concept of Industry 4.0 is based on using approaches like the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Cyber-Physical Systems and Virtual Reality. With the decreasing cost of VR devices, even smaller businesses are able to implement such technologies. It is therefore crucial that mechanical engineering graduates are familiar with these new technologies and trends. We had to use unconventional methods to educate mechanical engineering students in the latest trends in IT and VR. Back in 2010, there were almost no tools available for teaching how to create industry-themed VR environments, which did not require complicated coding, so we decided to make our own. To simplify the development, we used Source Engine as the core and enhanced it with a library of textures, models and scripts we called DigiTov. Although Source Engine is a game engine, the master logic of VR development is the same as for professional SW products. In autumn 2015, a group of 10 students modified the DigiTov for Unity3D, forming a team made up of different roles

Presence and Cybersickness in Virtual Reality Are Negatively Related: A Review

In order to take advantage of the potential offered by the medium of virtual reality (VR), it will be essential to develop an understanding of how to maximize the desirable experience of “presence” in a virtual space (“being there”), and how to minimize the undesirable feeling of “cybersickness” (a constellation of discomfort symptoms experienced in VR). Although there have been frequent reports of a possible link between the observer’s sense of presence and the experience of bodily discomfort in VR, the amount of literature that discusses the nature of the relationship is limited. Recent research has underlined the possibility that these variables have shared causes, and that both factors may be manipulated with a single approach. This review paper summarizes the concepts of presence and cybersickness and highlights the strengths and gaps in our understanding about their relationship. We review studies that have measured the association between presence and cybersickness, and conclude that the balance of evidence favors a negative relationship between the two factors which is driven principally by sensory integration processes. We also discuss how system immersiveness might play a role in modulating both presence and cybersickness. However, we identify a serious absence of high-powered studies that aim to reveal the nature of this relationship. Based on this evidence we propose recommendations for future studies investigating presence, cybersickness, and other related factors