From presence to consciousness through virtual reality

Immersive virtual environments can break the deep, everyday connection between where our senses tell us we are and where we are actually located and whom we are with. The concept of 'presence' refers to the phenomenon of behaving and feeling as if we are in the virtual world created by computer displays. In this article, we argue that presence is worthy of study by neuroscientists, and that it might aid the study of perception and consciousness

Media Presence and Inner Presence: The Sense of Presence in Virtual Reality Technologies

Abstract. Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion \ud of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there \ud is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity. \ud Given its key role and the rate at which new approaches to understanding and examining presence are appearing, this chapter draws together current research on presence to provide an up to date overview of the most widely accepted approaches to its understanding and measurement

Multimodality for Passive Experience: Effects of Visual, Auditory, Vibration and Draught Stimuli on Sense of Presence

Adequate use of multimodal stimuli plays a crucial role in help forming the sense of presence within a virtual environment. While most of the presence research attempts to engage more sensory modalities to induce a higher sense of presence, this paper investigates the relevance of each sensory modality and different combinations on the subjective sense of presence using a specifically designed scenario of a passive experience. We chose a neutral test scenario of “waiting at a train station while a train is passing by” to avoid the potential influence of story narrative on mental presence and replicated realistic multimodal stimuli that are highly relevant to our test setting. All four stimuli -visual, auditory, vibration, and draught -with 16 possibilities of combinations were systematically evaluated with 24 participants. The evaluation was performed on one crucial aspect of presence –“realness” to reflect user presence in general. The perceived realism value was assessed using a scalometer. The findings of main effects indicate that the auditory stimuli had the most significant contribution in creating the sense of presence. The results of interaction effects suggest the impact of draught stimuli is significant in relation to other stimuli -visual and auditory. Also, the gender effects revealed that the sense of presence reported by female participants is influenced by more factors than merely adding more sensory modalities

Constructing sonified haptic line graphs for the blind student: first steps

Line graphs stand as an established information visualisation and analysis technique taught at various levels of difficulty according to standard Mathematics curricula. It has been argued that blind individuals cannot use line graphs as a visualisation and analytic tool because they currently primarily exist in the visual medium. The research described in this paper aims at making line graphs accessible to blind students through auditory and haptic media. We describe (1) our design space for representing line graphs, (2) the technology we use to develop our prototypes and (3) the insights from our preliminary work

VR-based Soundscape Evaluation: Auralising the Sound from Audio Rendering, Reflection Modelling to Source Synthesis in the Acoustic Environment

Soundscape has been growing as a research field associated with acoustics, urban planning, environmental psychology and other disciplines since it was first introduced in the 1960s. To assess soundscapes, subjective validation is frequently integrated with soundscape reproduction. However, the existing soundscape standards do not give clear reproduction specifications to recreate a virtual sound environment. Selecting appropriate audio rendering methods, simulating sound propagation, and synthesising non-point sound sources remain major challenges for researchers. This thesis therefore attempts to give alternative or simplified strategies to reproduce a virtual sound environment by suggesting binaural or monaural audio renderings, reflection modelling during sound propagation, and less synthesis points of non-point sources. To solve these unclear issues, a systematic review of original studies first examines the ecological validity of immersive virtual reality in soundscape evaluation. Through recording and reproducing audio-visual stimuli of sound environments, participants give their subjective responses according to the structured questionnaires. Thus, different audio rendering, reflection modelling, and source synthesis methods are validated by subjective evaluation. The results of this thesis reveal that a rational setup of VR techniques and evaluation methods will be a solid foundation for soundscape evaluation with reliable ecological validity. For soundscape audio rendering, the binaural rendering still dominates the soundscape evaluation compared with the monaural. For sound propagation with consideration of different reflection conditions, fewer orders can be employed during sound reflection to assess different kinds of sounds in outdoor sound environments through VR experiences. The VR experience combining both HMDs and Ambisonics will significantly strengthen our immersion at low orders. For non-point source synthesis, especially line sources, when adequate synthesis points reach the threshold of the minimum audible angle, human ears cannot distinguish the location of the synthesised sound sources in the horizontal plane, thus increasing immersion significantly. These minimum specifications and simplifications refine the understanding of soundscape reproduction, and the findings will be beneficial for researchers and engineers in determining appropriate audio rendering, sound propagation modelling, and non-point source synthesis strategies

Ecological Validity of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) Techniques for the Perception of Urban Sound Environments

Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) is a simulated technology used to deliver multisensory information to people under different environmental conditions. When IVR is generally applied in urban planning and soundscape research, it reveals attractive possibilities for the assessment of urban sound environments with higher immersion for human participation. In virtual sound environments, various topics and measures are designed to collect subjective responses from participants under simulated laboratory conditions. Soundscape or noise assessment studies during virtual experiences adopt an evaluation approach similar to in situ methods. This paper aims to review the approaches that are utilized to assess the ecological validity of IVR for the perception of urban sound environments and the necessary technologies during audio–visual reproduction to establish a dynamic IVR experience that ensures ecological validity. The review shows that, through the use of laboratory tests including subjective response surveys, cognitive performance tests and physiological responses, the ecological validity of IVR can be assessed for the perception of urban sound environments. The reproduction system with head-tracking functions synchronizing spatial audio and visual stimuli (e.g., head-mounted displays (HMDs) with first-order Ambisonics (FOA)-tracked binaural playback) represents the prevailing trend to achieve high ecological validity. These studies potentially contribute to the outcomes of a normalized evaluation framework for subjective soundscape and noise assessments in virtual environment

Virtual acoustics displays

The real time acoustic display capabilities are described which were developed for the Virtual Environment Workstation (VIEW) Project at NASA-Ames. The acoustic display is capable of generating localized acoustic cues in real time over headphones. An auditory symbology, a related collection of representational auditory 'objects' or 'icons', can be designed using ACE (Auditory Cue Editor), which links both discrete and continuously varying acoustic parameters with information or events in the display. During a given display scenario, the symbology can be dynamically coordinated in real time with 3-D visual objects, speech, and gestural displays. The types of displays feasible with the system range from simple warnings and alarms to the acoustic representation of multidimensional data or events

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion