A Survey of Interaction Techniques and Devices for Large High Resolution Displays

Innovations in large high-resolution wall-sized displays have been yielding benefits to visualizations in industry and academia, leading to a rapidly growing increase of their implementations. In scenarios such as these, the displayed visual information tends to be larger than the users field of view, hence the necessity to move away from traditional interaction methods towards more suitable interaction devices and techniques. This paper aspires to explore the state-of-the-art with respect to such technologies for large high-resolution displays

Communication in Immersive Social Virtual Reality: A Systematic Review of 10 Years' Studies

As virtual reality (VR) technologies have improved in the past decade, more research has investigated how they could support more effective communication in various contexts to improve collaboration and social connectedness. However, there was no literature to summarize the uniqueness VR provided and put forward guidance for designing social VR applications for better communication. To understand how VR has been designed and used to facilitate communication in different contexts, we conducted a systematic review of the studies investigating communication in social VR in the past ten years by following the PRISMA guidelines. We highlight current practices and challenges and identify research opportunities to improve the design of social VR to better support communication and make social VR more accessible.Comment: Chinese CHI '22: The Tenth International Symposium of Chinese CHI (Chinese CHI 2022

Modelling virtual urban environments

In this paper, we explore the way in which virtual reality (VR) systems are being broadened to encompass a wide array of virtual worlds, many of which have immediate applicability to understanding urban issues through geocomputation. Wesketch distinctions between immersive, semi-immersive and remote environments in which single and multiple users interact in a variety of ways. We show how suchenvironments might be modelled in terms of ways of navigating within, processes of decision-making which link users to one another, analytic functions that users have to make sense of the environment, and functions through which users can manipulate, change, or design their world. We illustrate these ideas using four exemplars that we have under construction: a multi-user internet GIS for Londonwith extensive links to 3-d, video, text and related media, an exploration of optimal retail location using a semi-immersive visualisation in which experts can explore such problems, a virtual urban world in which remote users as avatars can manipulate urban designs, and an approach to simulating such virtual worlds through morphological modelling based on the digital record of the entire decision-making process through which such worlds are built

Visualizing a new sustainable world: toward the next generation of virtual reality in the built environment

What is the future of virtual reality (VR) in the built environment? As work becomes increasingly distributed across remote and hybrid forms of organizing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to rethink how we use the set of collaborative technologies to move toward a sustainable world. We propose a new vision of VR as a discipline-agnostic platform for an interdisciplinary integration of the allied design, social, and environmental disciplines to address emerging challenges across the building sectors. We build this contribution through the following steps. First, we contextualize VR technologies within the changing digital landscape and underlying tensions in the built environment practices. Second, we characterize the difficulties that have arisen in using them to address challenges, illustrating our argument with leading examples. Third, we conceptualize VR configurations and explore underlying assumptions for their use across disciplinary scenarios. Fourth, we propose a vision of VR as a discipline-agnostic platform that can support built environment users in visualizing preferred futures. We conclude by providing directions for research and practice

Virtual reality utility and usefulness in the furniture, fixture and equipment sector: a validation of interactive and distributed immersion

PURPOSE: The Furniture, Fixture and Equipment (FFE) sector is well placed to leverage virtual reality (VR) technology for competitive and operational advantages; however, the diffusion of VR applications in this sector has followed a steep curve. This study reports on the implementation of two novel VR applications in the FFE sector and also investigates the challenges and benefits associated with their use and adaptability. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A sequential exploratory mixed research methodology consisting of three phases was adopted for this study. This included identification of factors that affect/facilitate the implementation of VR (Challenges and Benefits) using experiments during in-house prototyping of VR applications, a rigorous literature review and questionnaire survey to solicit FFE Stakeholder's (n = 117) opinion on the utility and usefulness of the proposed applications and to the understand factors that facilitate and inhibit their implementation in FFE's context, particularly as a design communication and coordination tool. FINDINGS: The findings of this study revealed that distributed and single-user VR has become essential to digitalising the FFE sector's design communication with improved design communication being regarded as the most important benefit of its use. Conversely, the most critical challenge that inhibits the implementation of these two VR applications in the FFE sector is the perceived cost. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study provides valuable insight to FFE's stakeholders to devise action plans to mitigate myriad complex and interrelated factors that affect the adoption of virtual reality technology in the FFE sector that are otherwise very hard to understand, and the consequential implementation of any mitigation plans cannot be devised

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

LoCoMoTe – a framework for classification of natural locomotion in VR by task, technique and modality

Virtual reality (VR) research has provided overviews of locomotion techniques, how they work, their strengths and overall user experience. Considerable research has investigated new methodologies, particularly machine learning to develop redirection algorithms. To best support the development of redirection algorithms through machine learning, we must understand how best to replicate human navigation and behaviour in VR, which can be supported by the accumulation of results produced through live-user experiments. However, it can be difficult to identify, select and compare relevant research without a pre-existing framework in an ever-growing research field. Therefore, this work aimed to facilitate the ongoing structuring and comparison of the VR-based natural walking literature by providing a standardised framework for researchers to utilise. We applied thematic analysis to study methodology descriptions from 140 VR-based papers that contained live-user experiments. From this analysis, we developed the LoCoMoTe framework with three themes: navigational decisions, technique implementation, and modalities. The LoCoMoTe framework provides a standardised approach to structuring and comparing experimental conditions. The framework should be continually updated to categorise and systematise knowledge and aid in identifying research gaps and discussions

A Transferable Psychological Evaluation of Virtual Reality Applied to Safety Training in Chemical Manufacturing

High-profile accidents in the Chemical sector—across research and manufacturing scales—have provided strong drivers to develop a new benchmark in safety training and compliance. Herein, we describe the design, implementation, and standardized psychological evaluation of virtual reality (VR) applied to process safety training. Through a specific industrial case study, we show that testable learning of complex safety-specific tasks in VR is statistically equivalent to traditional slide-based video training. However, VR training presents a measurable positive improvement on trainees’ perception of overall learning and their feeling of presence in the task during training. It has also been shown that knowledge retention from video lectures can be overestimated, if not controlled. Through these results—and our transferable blueprint for robustly assessing any new VR training platform—we envisage a range of technologically enabled efforts to enhance safety performance in both laboratory- and plant-based activities. Implications for physical resource-saving projects are also described