An empirical study of virtual reality menu interaction and design

This study focused on three different menu designs each with their own unique interactions and organizational structures to determine which design features would perform the best. Fifty-four participants completed 27 tasks using each of the three designs. The menus were analyzed based on task performance, accuracy, usability, intuitiveness, and user preference. Also, an analysis was conducted between two different menu organization styles: top-down menu organization (Method-TD) and bottom-up organization (Method-BU). There was no evidence that demographic factors had any effect on the overall results. By and large, the Stacked menu design received very positive results and feedback from all the participants. The Spatial design received average feedback with some participants preferring it while others struggled to use it and felt that it was too physically demanding. The worst performer was the Radial design that consistently ranked last and failed to pass usability and accuracy tests. A NGOMSL study was conducted to determine any differences in performance between a top-down menu organizational approach and a bottom-up approach or differences between the predicted task completion times and the reported times. The results of this study predicted that the Spatial design should have taken the least amount of time to perform, however, the experimental results showed that the Stacked design in fact out-performed the Spatial design’s task completion times. A potential explanation as to why the Stacked outperformed the Spatial is the increased physical demand of the Spatial design not anticipated with the NGOMSL analysis because of a design feature which caused a high level of cumbersomeness with the interactions. Overall, there were no statistical differences found between Method-TD and Method-BU, but a large difference found between the predicted times and observed times for Stacked, Radial, and Spatial. Participants overwhelmingly performed better than the predicted completion times for the Stacked design, but then did not complete the tasks by the predicted times for the Radial and Spatial. This study recommends the Stacked menu for VR environments and proposes further research into a Stacked-Spatial hybrid design to allow for the participant’s preferred design aspects of both designs to be used in a VR environment

City on stats: visualização imersiva de dados recolhidos por rede de sensores móveis

A cada dia que passa assiste-se a um crescente aumento das áreas urbanas e a um agravamento da qualidade do ar devido a fatores como a poluição dos carros e das fábricas. A qualidade do ar apresenta um fator bastante importante na saúde das pessoas sendo necessário manter bons níveis da qualidade do ar e agir quando esta se deteriora. Com vista aos cidadãos poderem usar os dados da monitorização da qualidade do ar nas nossas cidades através de uma nova forma de visualização, foi desenvolvida o City On Stats, uma aplicação que visa representar num ambiente 3D os dados da poluição na cidade, ao mesmo tempo que serve como forma alternativa de visualização de dados, destinada a adultos e jovens adultos, que estão habituados a interagir com ambientes 3D e jogos 3D. Os testes realizados no âmbito deste trabalho demonstraram que o City On Stats é uma ferramenta que oferece um bom desempenho tanto ao nível de entretenimento e liberdade de exploração quanto ao nível de visualização de dados dos poluentes atmosféricos, tendo permitido aos utilizadores conseguir realizar tarefas de forma célere. Nesta dissertação, encontra-se documentado todo o trabalho do desenvolvimento do City On Stats, desde a revisão bibliográfica até à avaliação da aplicação.Each passing day is witnessing a growing increase in urban areas and a deterioration in air quality due to factors such as pollution of cars and factories. Air quality is a very important factor in people’s health and it is necessary to maintain good levels of air quality and to act when it deteriorates. In order for citizens to be able to use air quality monitoring data in our cities through a new way of viewing, City On Stats has been developed, an application that aims to represent city pollution data in a 3D environment, which at the same time serves as an alternative form of data visualization for adults and young adults who are used to interacting with 3D environments and 3D games. Tests carried out within this work have shown that City On Stats is a tool that performs well in terms of entertainment and freedom of exploration as well as the visualisation of air pollutant data and has enabled users to perform tasks in a short time. In this dissertation, all the development work of City On Stats is documented, from the literature review to the application evaluation

Integrating Big Data analytics, virtual reality, and ARAIG to support resilience assessment and development in tactical training

© 2017 IEEE. Combat tactical training activities utilising virtual reality environments are being used increasingly to create training scenarios to promote resilience against stressors and to enable standardized training scenarios to allow trainees to learn techniques for various stressors. Resilience is an important component for mental health. However, assessment of the trainees' response to these training activities has either been limited to various pre and post training assessment metrics or collected in parallel during experiments and analysed after collection rather than in real-time. New Big Data approaches have the potential to provide real-time analytics. We have created a Big Data analytics platform, Athena, that in real-time acquires data from a first person shooter military combat simulation game, ArmA 3, as well as the data ArmA 3 sends to the muscle stimulation component of a multisensory garment, ARAIG that provides on the body feedback to the wearer for communications, weapon fire and being hit and integrates that data with physiological response data such as heart rate, breathing behaviour and blood oxygen saturation. We present results from our initial pilot study from an ethics approved equipment integration study. Our approach is equally applicable for Virtual Reality Graded Exposure Therapy with physiological monitoring