Rhythmic Stimuli Effects on Subjective Time Perception in Immersive Virtual Environments

Time perception is essential to a user’s experience and interaction in immersive virtual environments. To explore the performance and subjective time perception when carrying out a cognitive task in a virtual environment while being exposed to unrelated rhythmic stimuli, we devised an experiment comprising a simple object sorting task with varying rhythmic stimuli, investigating time experience in the form of time estimation and time judgment. The results imply varying effects depending on the usage of single stimuli compared to synchronized audio-visual effects. Single stimuli can lead to more pronounced time perception variations regardless of tempo, but these variations are not specifically compression or dilation. Synchronized stimuli, in turn, can lead to time compression or dilation, depending on the tempo. The results further imply that time being judged as fast or slow correlates to stimuli’ tempo, while the presence of visual stimuli can negatively impact task performance

A Dynamic and Scriptable Environment and Framework for Stimulus-Based Cognitive Research in Virtual Reality

peer reviewe

Socially-Sensitive Systems Design:Exploring Social Potential

In human society, individuals have long voluntarily organized themselves in groups, which embody, provide and/or facilitate a range of different social concepts, such as governance, justice, or mutual aid. These social groups vary in form, size, and permanence, but in different ways provide benefits to their members. In turn, members of these groups use their understanding and awareness of group expectations to help determine their own actions, to the benefit of themselves, each other, and the health of the group

Hybrid Societies : Challenges and Perspectives in the Design of Collective Behavior in Self-organizing Systems

Hybrid societies are self-organizing, collective systems, which are composed of different components, for example, natural and artificial parts (bio-hybrid) or human beings interacting with and through technical systems (socio-technical). Many different disciplines investigate methods and systems closely related to the design of hybrid societies. A stronger collaboration between these disciplines could allow for re-use of methods and create significant synergies. We identify three main areas of challenges in the design of self-organizing hybrid societies. First, we identify the formalization challenge. There is an urgent need for a generic model that allows a description and comparison of collective hybrid societies. Second, we identify the system design challenge. Starting from the formal specification of the system, we need to develop an integrated design process. Third, we identify the challenge of interdisciplinarity. Current research on self-organizing hybrid societies stretches over many different fields and hence requires the re-use and synthesis of methods at intersections between disciplines. We then conclude by presenting our perspective for future approaches with high potential in this area

PENGARUH KUALITAS PRODUK DAN HARGA TERHADAP KEPUASAN KONSUMEN PADA PT. MARGA TIRTA KENCANA (Survei Pada Penghuni Perumahan Permata Buah Batu 1)

ABSTRAK Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh Kualitas Produk dan Harga terhadap Kepuasan Konsumen pada PT. Marga Tirta Kencana (Survei Pada Perumahan Permata Buah Batu 1 Bandung). Rumusan masalah dalam penelitian ini adalah bagaimana tanggapan konsumen mengenai kualitas produk yang ditawarkan, bagaimana tanggapan konsumen mengenai harga yang ditawarkan, bagaimana kepuasan konsumen, dan seberapa besar pengaruh kualitas produk dan harga terhadap kepuasan konsumen di PT. Marga Tirta Kencana Bandung secara simultan dan parsial. Metode yang digunakan penulis dalam penelitian ini adalah penelitian deskriptif dan verifikatif dengan tehnik pengumpulan data dengan interview (wawancara), kuesioner (angket) dan observasi (pengamatan). Adapun ukuran populasinya 619 orang dengan sampel 87 orang. Sedangkan tehnik sampling yang digunakan untuk menghitung besarnya ukuran sampel dalam non-probability sampling. Sesuai dengan perhitungan statistik, Kualitas Produk berada dalam kategori baik dan Harga berada dalam kategori baik terhadap Kepuasan Konsumen pada PT. Marga Tirta Kencana yang berada dalam kategori puas. Kata Kunci : Kualitas Produk, Harga, Kepuasan Konsume

QUALINET white paper on definitions of Immersive Media Experience (IMEx)

With the coming of age of virtual/augmented reality and interactive media, numerous definitions, frameworks, and models of immersion have emerged across different fields ranging from computer graphics to literary works. Immersion is oftentimes used interchangeably with presence as both concepts are closely related. However, there are noticeable interdisciplinary differences regarding definitions, scope, and constituents that are required to be addressed so that a coherent understanding of the concepts can be achieved. Such consensus is vital for paving the directionality of the future of immersive media experiences (IMEx) and all related matters. The aim of this white paper is to provide a survey of definitions of immersion and presence which leads to a definition of immersive media experience (IMEx). The Quality of Experience (QoE) for immersive media is described by establishing a relationship between the concepts of QoE and IMEx followed by application areas of immersive media experience. Influencing factors on immersive media experience are elaborated as well as the assessment of immersive media experience. Finally, standardization activities related to IMEx are highlighted and the white paper is concluded with an outlook related to future developments

Sociality and Self-Organisation in Next-Generation Distributed Environments

The proliferation of computationally powerful, interconnected devices entails a new generation of networked applications and social utilities characterized by a strong growth in scale and dynamics.Distributed virtual environments constitute a privileged example, involving a high degree of interactivity as well as tightened constraints and requirements. As a response to these issues, this dissertation explores and substantiates sociality as a fundamental principle both in and for the design of such systems.A specialized, dual peer-to-peer architecture is introduced, combining a highly-structured backbone overlay with a loosely-structured geometric client overlay synergistically complementing each other. To enable a global-scale, single-instanced environment, it is imperative to include as many client-side resources as possible and unburden the backbone. The focus of this dissertation therefore lies upon the latter, geometric overlay.By taking an interdisciplinary perspective and leveraging different aspects of sociality, a series of self-organized approaches addressing major problem areas are proposed: a collaborative filtering mechanism for the handling of information overload created from the soaring amounts of users and objects; a confidentiality framework for the protection of sensitive data more likely exposed due to an increased interactivity; and two resource allocation schemes for fairly distributing surplus capacities in the face of critical regional surges.Detailed evaluations show that these decentralized algorithms operate robustly and effectively, while yielding well-converging results in comparison to optimal, global-knowledge scenarios