19,997 research outputs found
Viewing the Future? Virtual Reality In Journalism
Journalism underwent a flurry of virtual reality content creation, production and distribution starting in the final months of 2015. The New York Times distributed more than 1 million cardboard virtual reality viewers and released an app showing a spherical video short about displaced refugees. The Los Angeles Times landed people next to a crater on Mars. USA TODAY took visitors on a ride-along in the "Back to the Future" car on the Universal Studios lot and on a spin through Old Havana in a bright pink '57 Ford. ABC News went to North Korea for a spherical view of a military parade and to Syria to see artifacts threatened by war. The Emblematic Group, a company that creates virtual reality content, followed a woman navigating a gauntlet of anti- abortion demonstrators at a family planning clinic and allowed people to witness a murder-suicide stemming from domestic violence.In short, the period from October 2015 through February 2016 was one of significant experimentation with virtual reality (VR) storytelling. These efforts are part of an initial foray into determining whether VR is a feasible way to present news. The year 2016 is shaping up as a period of further testing and careful monitoring of potential growth in the use of virtual reality among consumers
Examining the role of smart TVs and VR HMDs in synchronous at-a-distance media consumption
This article examines synchronous at-a-distance media consumption from two perspectives: How it can be facilitated using existing consumer displays (through TVs combined with smartphones), and imminently available consumer displays (through virtual reality (VR) HMDs combined with RGBD sensing). First, we discuss results from an initial evaluation of a synchronous shared at-a-distance smart TV system, CastAway. Through week-long in-home deployments with five couples, we gain formative insights into the adoption and usage of at-a-distance media consumption and how couples communicated during said consumption. We then examine how the imminent availability and potential adoption of consumer VR HMDs could affect preferences toward how synchronous at-a-distance media consumption is conducted, in a laboratory study of 12 pairs, by enhancing media immersion and supporting embodied telepresence for communication. Finally, we discuss the implications these studies have for the near-future of consumer synchronous at-a-distance media consumption. When combined, these studies begin to explore a design space regarding the varying ways in which at-a-distance media consumption can be supported and experienced (through music, TV content, augmenting existing TV content for immersion, and immersive VR content), what factors might influence usage and adoption and the implications for supporting communication and telepresence during media consumption
Analysis of distracted pedestrians' waiting time: Head-Mounted Immersive Virtual Reality application
This paper analyzes the distracted pedestrians' waiting time before crossing
the road in three conditions: 1) not distracted, 2) distracted with a
smartphone and 3) distracted with a smartphone in the presence of virtual
flashing LED lights on the crosswalk as a safety measure. For the means of data
collection, we adapted an in-house developed virtual immersive reality
environment (VIRE). A total of 42 volunteers participated in the experiment.
Participants' positions and head movements were recorded and used to calculate
walking speeds, acceleration and deceleration rates, surrogate safety measures,
time spent playing smartphone game, etc. After a descriptive analysis on the
data, the effects of these variables on pedestrians' waiting time are analyzed
by employing a cox proportional hazard model. Several factors were identified
as having impact on waiting time. The results show that an increase in initial
walk speed, percentage of time the head was oriented toward smartphone during
crossing, bigger minimum missed gaps and unsafe crossings resulted in shorter
waiting times. On the other hand, an increase in the percentage of time the
head was oriented toward smartphone during waiting time, crossing time and maze
solving time, means longer waiting times for participants.Comment: Published in the proceedings of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics
201
Discrete event simulation and virtual reality use in industry: new opportunities and future trends
This paper reviews the area of combined discrete
event simulation (DES) and virtual reality (VR) use within industry.
While establishing a state of the art for progress in this
area, this paper makes the case for VR DES as the vehicle of choice
for complex data analysis through interactive simulation models,
highlighting both its advantages and current limitations. This paper
reviews active research topics such as VR and DES real-time
integration, communication protocols, system design considerations,
model validation, and applications of VR and DES. While
summarizing future research directions for this technology combination,
the case is made for smart factory adoption of VR DES as
a new platform for scenario testing and decision making. It is put
that in order for VR DES to fully meet the visualization requirements
of both Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet visions of digital
manufacturing, further research is required in the areas of lower
latency image processing, DES delivery as a service, gesture recognition
for VR DES interaction, and linkage of DES to real-time data streams and Big Data sets
- …