Adding Dimension to Content: Immersive Virtual Reality and Presence for e-Commerce

Consumer Virtual Reality (VR) has been in and out of the spotlight for many decades, each time heralded to usher in a new generation of virtual experiences that never eventuated beyond publicity and limited adoption. Two of the more recent attempts made were by e-commerce giants in the e-retailing space, with eBay-Myer VR Department Store and Alibaba VR Buy+ being launched to much fanfare yet followed by quick disappearance from public view and disquieting silence. This sudden rise and fall (again) in the popularity of VR for e-commerce motivates a critical need to elicit a deeper understanding of its effectiveness for product and service presentation, to promote wiser future investment that leads to tangible outcomes for mainstream consumers. As a discipline, Information Systems has frequently investigated conventional presentation formats (e.g., text, photos, and videos), but few studies address immersive formats that go beyond 2D presentation or simple 3D product models. There is an opportunity to learn from these apparent failures and enable future success. Unlike conventional presentation formats, VR is more capable of enabling "presence", with the feeling of being physically and mentally present in the virtual environment where virtual objects and environment are experienced as actual physical objects and environment. Based on Expectation Confirmation Theory and the Stimulus-Organism-Response Framework, the dissertation explores answers to a central question of how Virtual Reality affects consumers' behaviours by answering the following questions: i) what consumers' expectations of VR as a presentation format are; ii) what differentiates the experiences provided by non-immersive VR and immersive VR; iii) what characteristics of VR, both the technology and the virtual environment, stimulate presence; and iv) how the experience provided by VR influences consumers' intentions and behaviours. This doctoral research contains a series of studies that build upon each other as an exercise in learning from failure to support positive change. Study 1 is an archival content analysis of online reviews of the Alibaba Buy+ VR shopping application to reveal consumers' expectations of VR, and how confirming or disconfirming their expectations then influences a consumer's interpretation and judgement of VR shopping and e-retailers. Study 2a is a user-centric explorative study using semi-structured interviews to identify influential factors which induce presence, and to understand participants' perceptions surrounding the use of immersive Virtual Reality for e-commerce tasks. Study 2b used a controlled lab experiment for complementary and triangulation purposes to test the causal relationships between the identified influential factors and presence, the effects of presence on consumers' behaviours, and whether presentation formats enhance consumer learning about products (i.e., accommodation in this study). By completing a systematic chain of studies, this thesis research has addressed literature gaps concerning the lack of deeper understanding of how to utilise immersive Virtual Reality for e-commerce, and virtual environment and technological factors that induce presence. The theoretical contributions are an extension to and reconfirmation of Expectation-Confirmation Theory within a VR context, a reconceptualisation of presence, the identification of antecedents of presence related to virtual environments and technology, and the identification of task complexity as a boundary condition for presence to take effect. These findings have practical implications to maximise benefits of applying Virtual Reality by designing a virtual environment that meets consumers' expectations and supports their feeling of presence

Virtual Reality

At present, the virtual reality has impact on information organization and management and even changes design principle of information systems, which will make it adapt to application requirements. The book aims to provide a broader perspective of virtual reality on development and application. First part of the book is named as "virtual reality visualization and vision" and includes new developments in virtual reality visualization of 3D scenarios, virtual reality and vision, high fidelity immersive virtual reality included tracking, rendering and display subsystems. The second part named as "virtual reality in robot technology" brings forth applications of virtual reality in remote rehabilitation robot-based rehabilitation evaluation method and multi-legged robot adaptive walking in unstructured terrains. The third part, named as "industrial and construction applications" is about the product design, space industry, building information modeling, construction and maintenance by virtual reality, and so on. And the last part, which is named as "culture and life of human" describes applications of culture life and multimedia-technology

Presence 2005: the eighth annual international workshop on presence, 21-23 September, 2005 University College London (Conference proceedings)

OVERVIEW (taken from the CALL FOR PAPERS) Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at PRESENCE 2005 at University College London in London, England, September 21-23, 2005. The eighth in a series of highly successful international workshops, PRESENCE 2005 will provide an open discussion forum to share ideas regarding concepts and theories, measurement techniques, technology, and applications related to presence, the psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience, including the sense of 'being there' experienced by users of advanced media such as virtual reality. The concept of presence in virtual environments has been around for at least 15 years, and the earlier idea of telepresence at least since Minsky's seminal paper in 1980. Recently there has been a burst of funded research activity in this area for the first time with the European FET Presence Research initiative. What do we really know about presence and its determinants? How can presence be successfully delivered with today's technology? This conference invites papers that are based on empirical results from studies of presence and related issues and/or which contribute to the technology for the delivery of presence. Papers that make substantial advances in theoretical understanding of presence are also welcome. The interest is not solely in virtual environments but in mixed reality environments. Submissions will be reviewed more rigorously than in previous conferences. High quality papers are therefore sought which make substantial contributions to the field. Approximately 20 papers will be selected for two successive special issues for the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. PRESENCE 2005 takes place in London and is hosted by University College London. The conference is organized by ISPR, the International Society for Presence Research and is supported by the European Commission's FET Presence Research Initiative through the Presencia and IST OMNIPRES projects and by University College London

Advancing proxy-based haptic feedback in virtual reality

This thesis advances haptic feedback for Virtual Reality (VR). Our work is guided by Sutherland's 1965 vision of the ultimate display, which calls for VR systems to control the existence of matter. To push towards this vision, we build upon proxy-based haptic feedback, a technique characterized by the use of passive tangible props. The goal of this thesis is to tackle the central drawback of this approach, namely, its inflexibility, which yet hinders it to fulfill the vision of the ultimate display. Guided by four research questions, we first showcase the applicability of proxy-based VR haptics by employing the technique for data exploration. We then extend the VR system's control over users' haptic impressions in three steps. First, we contribute the class of Dynamic Passive Haptic Feedback (DPHF) alongside two novel concepts for conveying kinesthetic properties, like virtual weight and shape, through weight-shifting and drag-changing proxies. Conceptually orthogonal to this, we study how visual-haptic illusions can be leveraged to unnoticeably redirect the user's hand when reaching towards props. Here, we contribute a novel perception-inspired algorithm for Body Warping-based Hand Redirection (HR), an open-source framework for HR, and psychophysical insights. The thesis concludes by proving that the combination of DPHF and HR can outperform the individual techniques in terms of the achievable flexibility of the proxy-based haptic feedback.Diese Arbeit widmet sich haptischem Feedback für Virtual Reality (VR) und ist inspiriert von Sutherlands Vision des ultimativen Displays, welche VR-Systemen die Fähigkeit zuschreibt, Materie kontrollieren zu können. Um dieser Vision näher zu kommen, baut die Arbeit auf dem Konzept proxy-basierter Haptik auf, bei der haptische Eindrücke durch anfassbare Requisiten vermittelt werden. Ziel ist es, diesem Ansatz die für die Realisierung eines ultimativen Displays nötige Flexibilität zu verleihen. Dazu bearbeiten wir vier Forschungsfragen und zeigen zunächst die Anwendbarkeit proxy-basierter Haptik durch den Einsatz der Technik zur Datenexploration. Anschließend untersuchen wir in drei Schritten, wie VR-Systeme mehr Kontrolle über haptische Eindrücke von Nutzern erhalten können. Hierzu stellen wir Dynamic Passive Haptic Feedback (DPHF) vor, sowie zwei Verfahren, die kinästhetische Eindrücke wie virtuelles Gewicht und Form durch Gewichtsverlagerung und Veränderung des Luftwiderstandes von Requisiten vermitteln. Zusätzlich untersuchen wir, wie visuell-haptische Illusionen die Hand des Nutzers beim Greifen nach Requisiten unbemerkt umlenken können. Dabei stellen wir einen neuen Algorithmus zur Body Warping-based Hand Redirection (HR), ein Open-Source-Framework, sowie psychophysische Erkenntnisse vor. Abschließend zeigen wir, dass die Kombination von DPHF und HR proxy-basierte Haptik noch flexibler machen kann, als es die einzelnen Techniken alleine können

The influence of virtual reality as an educational tool on teachers' pedagogy

Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2023.This study explores how does the use of Virtual Reality (VR) simulation as a technology tool influence teachers’ pedagogy. VR is a relatively new technology in the primary school classroom environment. This study explored how the use of this immersive, multimodal technology influenced the teachers’ pedagogy, their teaching and learning practices. The conceptual framework depicts the relationship between the teachers’ planning, resource selection, learning theories and the influence of the VR resource. Eight intermediate phase teachers from four private schools within a range of socio-economic groups in South Africa participated in this qualitative instrumental case study with a constructivist-interpretivist research design. Schools were purposefully selected, and participants taught at those schools and volunteered to be part of the study. The participants communicated both opportunities and challenges during the lessons. The teachers’ experiences and observations influenced their teaching pedagogy. Thematically analysed the data, using an inductive approach. More research is also needed to understand the deeper underlying reasons for the excitement of using VR, possibly by comparing the use of VR to that of high-resolution videos and/or images. This study demonstrates that technology has a positive influence as an educational tool on teachers' pedagogy; however, if the use of VR increases within the schooling sector, further investigations into educators’ professional development might assist teachers to integrate technology into their teaching practices.2020 Post Grad Doctoral BursaryScience, Mathematics and Technology EducationPhDUnrestricte

Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on disability, virtual reality and associated technologies (ICDVRAT 2000)

The proceedings of the conferenc