The Impact of a Character Posture Model on the Communication of Affect in an Immersive Virtual Environment

This paper presents the quantitative and qualitative findings from an experiment designed to evaluate a developing model of affective postures for full-body virtual characters in immersive virtual environments (IVEs). Forty-nine participants were each requested to explore a virtual environment by asking two virtual characters for instructions. The participants used a CAVE-like system to explore the environment. Participant responses and their impression of the virtual characters were evaluated through a wide variety of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Combining a controlled experimental approach with various data-collection methods provided a number of advantages such as providing a reason to the quantitative results. The quantitative results indicate that posture plays an important role in the communication of affect by virtual characters. The qualitative findings indicated that participants attribute a variety of psychological states to the behavioral cues displayed by virtual characters. In addition, participants tended to interpret the social context portrayed by the virtual characters in a holistic manner. This suggests that one aspect of the virtual scene colors the perception of the whole social context portrayed by the virtual characters. We conclude by discussing the importance of designing holistically congruent virtual characters especially in immersive settings

A Platform Independent Architecture for Virtual Characters and Avatars.

Poster abstrac

Social VR: A new medium for remote communication and collaboration

We are facing increasingly pressure on reducing travel and working remotely. Tools that support effective remote communication and collaboration are much needed. Social Virtual Reality (VR) is an emerging medium, which invites multiple users to join a collaborative virtual environment (VE) and has the potential to support remote communication in a natural and immersive way. We successfully organized a CHI 2020 Social VR workshop virtually on Mozilla Hubs, which invited researchers and practitioners to have a fruitful discussion over user representations and ethics, evaluation methods, and interaction techniques for social VR as an emerging immersive remote communication tool. In this CHI 2021 virtual workshop, we would like to organize it again on Mozilla Hubs, continuing the discussion about proxemics, social cues and VE designs, which were identified as important aspects for social VR communication in our CHI 2020 workshop

Social VR: A new medium for remote communication and collaboration

There is a growing need for effective remote communication, which has many positive societal impacts, such as reducing environmental pollution and travel costs, supporting rich collaboration by remotely connecting talented people. Social Virtual Reality (VR) invites multiple users to join a collaborative virtual environment, which creates new opportunities for remote communication. The goal of social VR is not to completely replicate reality, but to facilitate and extend the existing communication channels of the physical world. Apart from the benefits provided by social VR, privacy concerns and ethical risks are raised when the boundary between the real and the virtual world is blurred. This workshop is intended to spur discussions regarding technology, evaluation protocols, application areas, research ethics and legal regulations for social VR as an emerging immersive remote communication tool

The Impact of a Character Posture Model on the Communication of Affect in an Immersive Virtual Environment

This paper presents the quantitative and qualitative findings from an experiment designed to evaluate a developing model of affective postures for full-body virtual characters in immersive virtual environments (IVEs). Forty-nine participants were each requested to explore a virtual environment by asking two virtual characters for instructions. The participants used a CAVE-like system to explore the environment. Participant responses and their impression of the virtual characters were evaluated through a wide variety of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Combining a controlled experimental approach with various data-collection methods provided a number of advantages such as providing a reason to the quantitative results. The quantitative results indicate that posture plays an important role in the communication of affect by virtual characters. The qualitative findings indicated that participants attribute a variety of psychological states to the behavioral cues displayed by virtual characters. In addition, participants tended to interpret the social context portrayed by the virtual characters in a holistic manner. This suggests that one aspect of the virtual scene colors the perception of the whole social context portrayed by the virtual characters. We conclude by discussing the importance of designing holistically congruent virtual characters especially in immersive settings