Virtual Environments - Science topic

Whatever humans perceive through their senses(skin also) prepares human psychology and all perceptions are virtual depending on different experiences, circumstances, and environments. if we perform an analysis of our perception it could help us understand psychology. the perception creates hallucinations, hypnotism, and even schizophrenia or reality depending on the depiction.

Hi, some links that might expand your knowledge in the field:

A method (CN114237401B) for seamless linking of multiple virtual scenes (stimulus-response episodes) based on analysis of the user behavioral features including the emotional responses (for saliency evaluation) being properly recorded when interacting with different objects, components, events and accompanying feedback signals assigned according to specific moments and locations in sync with tag/label, keyword or another reference features within each VR scenes over timeline.

This method is suitable for gameplay scenario when multiple scenes are repeated, and the user responses and behaviors are more or less predictable.

However, mental strength is not reducible to emotional response of the user (see more in Morales and Jorge (2023). Mental Strength: A Theory of Experience Intensity. Philosophical Perspectives 37 (1):1-21.).

BCI disclosed in US 20220326771A1 allows to establish a communication channel based on the user responses (feedback) detected through biological signals as electrophysiological reactions to stimuli presented within multimodal content (AR/VR application). End even though it is possible to induce and control the ideomotor and (un)conscious activities of the spectator, the methods suitable for BCI's stimuli saliency evaluation are not suitable for haptic authoring tools and haptic augmenting techniques of video streaming content in a real time.

Guillotel, P., Danieau, F., Fleureau, J., Rouxel, I., (2016) Introducing basic principles of haptic cinematography editing. In: Eurographics Workshop on Intelligent Cinematography and Editing. pp. 1–7.

Schneider, O., MacLean, K., Swindells, C., Booth, K, (2017) Haptic experience design: What hapticians do and where they need help, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Volume 107, 2017, Pages 5-21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2017.04.004.

Dear Mr. Moradi!

You raise a decent issue to consider - how gamification as a concept evolves. Hereby please let me argue that there might not be a definition of digital gamification as such, but an enlarging set of applications of gamification in an online context:

Aschentrup, L., Steimer, P.A., Dadaczynski, K. et al. Effectiveness of gamified digital interventions in mental health prevention and health promotion among adults: a scoping review. BMC Public Health 24, 69 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-17517-3, Open access:

Yours sincerely, Bulcsu Szekely

Some commonly used evaluation methods in this domain:

Task Completion Metrics: These metrics measure the success and efficiency of completing specific tasks or objectives within the simulated environment. For example, in a robot navigation scenario, metrics like task completion time, path length, or goal-reaching accuracy can be used to assess performance.

Error Metrics: Error metrics quantify the discrepancy between the desired behavior and the actual behavior of the simulated robot. This can include metrics such as position error, orientation error, or trajectory tracking error, depending on the nature of the task.

Statistical Analysis: Statistical analysis techniques can be applied to evaluate the performance of the simulated robot. This can involve comparing different algorithms or configurations using statistical tests like t-tests or analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine if significant differences exist.

Efficiency Metrics: Efficiency metrics focus on resource consumption and performance optimization. For instance, in a robotic manipulation task, metrics like energy consumption, computational efficiency, or resource utilization can be considered to evaluate the efficiency of the simulated system.

Sensitivity Analysis: Sensitivity analysis involves varying the parameters or inputs of the simulation to evaluate their impact on the performance. This helps understand the system's sensitivity to different factors and aids in fine-tuning the algorithms or system design.

Simulation Benchmarking: Comparing the results of the simulated system with known benchmarks or existing systems can provide an objective evaluation. This can involve comparing metrics like accuracy, speed, or efficiency against established standards or state-of-the-art approaches.

Robustness Testing: Robustness testing involves subjecting the simulated system to various challenging scenarios or perturbations to assess its resilience and ability to handle unforeseen situations. This can involve testing against sensor noise, environmental variations, or simulated faults.

It is important to select evaluation methods that align with the specific goals and objectives of the robotics simulation research. Depending on the research problem, a combination of these quantitative evaluation methods may be appropriate to provide a comprehensive assessment of the simulated system's performance.

In space, medical officers don’t have access to a lot of specialist facilities and equipment. Virtual reality can create ‘digital twins’ of essential infrastructure, for example a radiology reading room, explains physician and space-medicine entrepreneur Shawna Pandya. This technology could also help to deliver better health care in remote settings on Earth. To make a real difference in human exploration, “we definitely need more data”, Pandya says. “Only around 600 people have ever been to space. About 12% of those people were female, with just 1% of them Black women.”

Ajit Singh I agree, but additionally, don't you think, they are good "places" for finding and contacting relevant researchers, usually the author of those resources, located in the given network?

Djuradj Caranovic Yes, virtual reality therapy (VRT) has the potential to transform PTSD treatment. As you indicated, virtual reality therapy involves the use of virtual worlds to expose patients to regulated and safe simulations of traumatic situations. This helps people to process and cope with their traumatic memories and feelings, which can help reduce PTSD symptoms.

Virtual reality treatment for PTSD has shown encouraging results in a number of research, with a number of studies proving its usefulness in lowering symptoms such as anxiety, avoidance, and flashbacks. For example, Rothbaum et al. (2001) discovered that virtual reality exposure therapy was successful in lowering PTSD symptoms when compared to a control group that received a waiting-list treatment in a randomized controlled experiment.

Virtual reality therapy has the potential to be a more efficient, accessible, and cost-effective treatment alternative for PTSD. Because virtual reality environments are readily copied and controlled, they can give patients repeated exposure to traumatic experiences without needing them to relive the trauma in real time. This is especially useful for individuals who are unable to access standard in-vivo exposure therapy or who have trouble recalling specifics of the traumatic experience.

It is important to note, however, that Virtual Reality therapy is still considered an experimental treatment option for PTSD, and more research is needed to fully understand its effectiveness in comparison to other evidence-based treatments, as well as to identify the best protocols and methods of delivery. Furthermore, Virtual Reality therapy should not be utilized as a replacement for existing therapies such as CBT and EMDR, but rather as an adjunct to them.

As a therapist, it is critical to stay current on the newest research and breakthroughs in the field of virtual reality treatment for PTSD, as well as to discuss the usage of virtual reality therapy with your patients and their families, as well as to work with other mental health specialists.

Like this phrase about metaverse in Google; What's certain is that the metaverse will be a new paradigm where our digital and online lives converge.

Mohammad Ali Mousavi AR and VR have brought about a transformation in the globe, particularly in the gaming industry. These technologies aid in the creation of a realistic image, as well as sound and other sensations, in order to provide an imaginative setting that stimulates a gamer's physical presence in the environment.

Dear Mr. Bükers!

I would go for "Its Learning":

1) https://itslearning.com/de/

2) A case-study: Joel Smith 2021. Isle of Man endorses hybrid learning as the way forward following 3 lockdowns, June 16, 2021, available at: https://itslearning.com/uk/news/hybrid-learning-is-the-way-forward/

3) Features: https://itslearning.com/uk/platform-features/

4) Webinars: https://itslearning.com/uk/about-us/resources/?rt=webinar

Yours sincerely, Bulcsu Szekely

1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbMwSLn0swk&ab_channel=BioinformaticsReview

2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClrvNtg1s34&ab_channel=ChaiTimeDataScience

3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX2wEdgx8jU&ab_channel=Euz%C3%A9bioGuimar%C3%A3es

4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgGm27_kroI&ab_channel=Ga%C5%A1per%C4%8Cefarin

Hope this helps:)

Hi Stephen,

This scale was published in the academic journal, you can use it in your research citing the following source. I hope this helps.

Dear Ercument Gorgul

The iMotions VR Eye Tracking Module allows for eye tracking data collection, visualization, and analysis in virtual environments using the HTC Vive Pro Eye and Varjo VR-2 eye tracking headsets.

Kind Regards

Dear Doris Aschenbrenner

These articles might help, have a look:

1. https://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20210915/21462.pdf

2. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01404497/document

3. https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/88215/2014-faasEtal.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

4. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/25586349/FaasEtal-v5.pdf;jsessionid=336A2ADBAC26D10544FAE664529F0975?sequence=1

5. https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/5/3/7/htm

Kind Regards

Dear Fernando Gonzalez Alonso

I prefer Google Meet, Because the quality of signal both video and audio are much better than other platforms like Skype, Zoom, WebEx etc.

Kind Regards

Qamar Ul Islam

Sure. You will need 3d object of Coronavirus and then some knowledge of Augmented reality SDK to accomplish your task.

In the battlefield, security issues as follows.

In science areas such as mathematics, where knowledge is very practical, adaptation to the virtual environment has not been too complex through the creation of videos where the different exercises were carried out. However, in areas such as art, where content that is highly abstract and ethereal is offered, its transformation into the digital environment has been very complex. They have also tried to make visual and practical examples of the different contents that presented difficulties for the students

Nice Contribution Grigori Evreinov

Following.

I'm not sure I have fully understood what you want. But why don't you use classic teleport, just as used by steamVR or GoogleEarth ?

You would drastically reduce your cybersickness in VR HMD, and it is still very enjoyable on computers (think of googlestreet map). Plus, you can make the teleportable areas slightly smaller than your room, so you wont have to manage collision with walls. You can just select non teleportable area to manage inside room collision.

In unity for example you can just use a raycast with a tag for teleportable area, so your users will not be able to teleport on each other or where you don't want them to teleport.

Clifton, J., & Palmisano, S. (2019). Effects of steering locomotion and teleporting on cybersickness and presence in HMD-based virtual reality. Virtual Reality. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-019-00407-8

Dear Collegues. A great problem is being observed;

Firstly, a high percentage of families do not have an adequate Internet connection, they have not enough devices for a permanent connection for all family members. It is opting for a face-to-face education converted to virtual.

On the other hand, primary and secondary school teachers do not have experience in online training, beyond the courses they have received, nor has the Government considered it to be an educational model on which money or training should have been invested.

Similarly, parents have neither the capacity nor the knowledge to act as tutors for the education of their children, and many of the primary and secondary children do not yet have the autonomy that the online training student requires.

Public administrations will have to take much more into account this training model, very established and refined in Higher Education.

Dear Ali Najafi

Khan Academic is a very innovative and up to date virtual learning free environment. I strongly reccomend it!

In my humble opinion, Khan Academy is on the cutting edge of virtual learning free technologies avaliable for everybody!

Here is my research on Hypervisors :

Good day Sarina. Please find attached the article as requested. With regard to your question, is it possible to test your own sample instead of using a referred sample? The reason for this is that the referred children's parents know they have been identified with DCD and therefor might influence their decision on the DCDQ'07. Also, if you already have referred children and you are planning on testing more children by yourself using the MABC-2 it can have an influence on your results since different examiners may influence the testing procedure. If it was me and it is possible I will get a sample, test the children with the MABC-2 put them into a DCD and non-DCD group and send the DCDQ'07 to those participants. I hope this information is helpful, feel free to ask further questions. Good luck with you PhD. Kind regards Monique

Hi! Not so much for teaching as for personal learning.

Or rather, this reminds us of the role of the teacher as scaffolding for individual learning (Vygotskij). Collective demos of new gadgets in the classroom is not so meaningful, and these technologies have been hyped and overrated.

The bottom line is: there is no separate cyber world, nor should digital information be understood as an information layer on top of the physical. Our one and only world is today rather understood as information, in information terms. I am following Floridi’s Philosophy of Information in this line of thinking. Otherwise we cant see the forest for all the trees.

Hi Sam, You may used multiple kinect camera in different of angles to capture more detail expression of the persons head and their shoulder

For Radio Access Network (RAN) software vendors that I came across can run on carrier grade NFVI IT servers include CertusNet & Tieto.

If you extend a little your question, maybe researcher give best solution.

What do you think about Kalman Filter?

I have used the PQ in my research and is also very interested in a scoring key... Or some kind of deeper explanation on how to interpret the results...

Quicktime MOV format, available at http://sourceforge.net/p/utdvrlibraries

Dear Karen,

I do create some video tutorials / recorded classes / additional content for my classes every once in a while. Indeed, Giphy tends to favor humour and memes that not always fit the content and may look out of place. 

I have had better results looking at these sites

Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/

Open Clip Art - https://openclipart.org/

That offer a wide variety of images, animated or not. And are legally OK to use, given you identify the authors.

Hope that helps,

Roberto

The Oculus Rift uses an IMU, which inherently suufers from drift. In particular, slow movements ard hard to measure or become noisy. YOu might also have a look here:

For measuring body sway, you should preferably use an optical system.

Yes - mostly the only differenz of the file formats are the depth of information of your 3-d model - but for printing and getting a glue of the shape and dimensions a stp file works great.

Greeds

thanks for your support , i'm grateful 

Thank you very much. I've already studied the meta-Analysis by Chen and Thropp, I haven't come along the second reference yet! Thank you :)

Thank you very much Mithileysh :)

The question is a bit dated, but since I just stumbled upon it and there are still followers to this: You could also take a look at the IPQ, a questionnaire on presence (see attached link).

It is being used actively by several groups working in the virtual reality domain, as seen recently e.g. at the ACM VRST 2016. 

Have you looked at Tuckmans model of storming norming performing and disengagement in reference to group work how the group forms who takes control of the project and directs it how each person agrees on a he project lead and how each person falls into their relevant roles and produc the piece of work and then the final result.

Research under the intercultural approach should consider various methods. however, in certain areas of knowledge required to propose new methods that integrate diverse perspectives about social problems.

Hi Frederick,

What type of HMD you should choose is highly dependent on what type of research you have intended to perform.

The Google Cardboard may be ok for some, others may require more advanced HMDs such as the Gear VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or the OSVR HDK from Razor. For others the requirements are even higher and they may need professional HMDs such as the Sensics dSight. In extreme cases custom HMDs may have to be built.

Another important thing to consider is how to create the content for your research. Depending on your skill of programming this can be more or less challenging (unless you intend to outsource the content creation). The different HMDs mentioned above have different ways to create the content and may support different game engines/image generators.

So consider your use case and choose a HMD that is advanced enough to give useful results and at the same time one which you can utilize fully.

Best regards

Björn

Ahlam,

Short answer is: 360 videos are not VR.

There is a very good understanding of what VR is; even when definitions do not sound exactly the same, they refer to the same concepts. The earliest ideas came from Dr. Ivan Sutherland's talk 'The Ultimate Display' (1965). While he did not work on VR as we know it today (the name 'Virtual Reality' got coined only in mid 80s by Jaron Lanier), Dr. Sutherland established the goal for the global domain of interactive computer graphics. To paraphrase his words as Dr. Fred Brooks did in his paper 'What is real about Virtual Reality' http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/WhatsReal.pdf :

     --- "Don’t think of that thing as a screen, think of it as a window, a window through which one looks into a  virtual world. The challenge to computer graphics is to make that virtual world look real, sound real, move and respond to interaction in real time, and even feel real."  (Dr. Brooks paraphrasing) ---

During IEEE VR 2010 conference, VR researchers gathered to discuss this very topic - what is VR and what is a definition of VR. At the time Dr. Brooks suggested following (I paraphrase it - attached is also a slide I snapped during that discussion):

    Necessary ingredients of Virtual Environments (VEs) or Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) are:

    (1) Real immersion – world is life size, the rest is blocked out,

    (2) Real time – viewpoint changes as head moves,

    (3) Real space – 3D worlds, concrete or abstract,

    (4) Real interaction – one manipulates virtual objects.

As I mentioned, if you check other definitions they pretty much come to the same issues - world has to be 3D so that a user can independently navigate through the space (6DOF navigation!), interact with the world and can receive a variety of sensory information (system feedback) as a result of that interaction. Note that interaction includes all types of sensory feedback that can be presented to the user - visual, auditory, vestibular, somatic (includes haptic/tactile and thermal), olfactory as well as gustation. The only relaxation from this definition that is recognized is the element of immersion - the extent to which sensory information surrounds the user (note: I am from the school of thought that defines immersion different from presence). In Dr. Brooks definition one would have to use fully immersive displays (visual displays: CAVEs, VR goggles), while in reality we have desktop displays that do not eliminate (block) the real world completely - one can see beyond the screen and so that discontinuity of images on the screen and what one can see outside of the screen still exists. In practice, users focus on the content presented on the screen, and this visual discontinuity does not play a big role. Largest number of training solutions, for example, are desktop VR, and so we also treat them as VR solutions. In short, VR is not only about VR headsets - VR can use any size and form of visual display that can present visual information. One should not forget that VR system could also have 3D audio display only - the use of visual information and visual display is not the ultimate ingredient of VR system.

Back to 360 videos - they are great technology but as you know they support only 3 DOF (degrees of freedom) independent navigation by the user and not 6DOF navigation as VR system expects it. While viewing 360 videos the user can only change the orientation of the viewpoint/camera, however the position of the viewpoint/camera is predetermined at the time of the recording. Interaction with objects seen on the display is also missing as the objects (and the rest of the world) are not recorded as 3D objects. I personally love 360 videos - they enable some incredible experiences. That is, however, separate technology in its own right and there is no need to mix it with VR. We can only guess that the attention VR technology enjoys today is very attractive (no doubt about that :-) ), and there is a desire to use it to advertise other solutions.

At the end of this message I added a few more links to papers that you may want to check. Hope this helps.

best, Amela Sadagic, Naval Postgraduate School

--------

-- from Dr. Brooks article:

I.E. Sutherland, “The Ultimate Display,” invited lecture, IFIP Congress 65. An abstract appears in Information Processing 1965: Proc. IFIP Congress 65, Vol. 2, W.A. Kalenich, ed., Spartan Books, Washington, D.C., and Macmillan, New York, pp. 506-508. A similar, but quite complete, paper is Sutherland’s “Computer Displays,”  Scientific American, Vol. 222, No. 6, June, 1970, pp. 57-81.

     MORE CLASSIC VR LITERATURE:

Ellis, S.R., Virtual Environments and Virtual Instruments. In: Carr, K. and England, R., eds. Simulated and Virtual Realities - Elements of Perception. London: Taylor and Francis. (very similar to Ellis, S.R. (1991) Nature and Origin of Virtual Environments: A Bibliographic Essay, Computing Systems in Engineering, 1995, 2(4), pp. 321-347.)

Furness, T. A., & Barfield, W., Introduction to Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design. In W. Barfield & T. A. Furness (Eds.), Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design, 1995, pp. 3-13. New York: Oxford University Press.

Slater, M. and Wilbur, S. (1997). A framework for immersive virtual environments (FIVE): Speculations on the role of presence in virtual environments, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 6(6), 603-616

Stanney, K., Mourant, R. R., & Kennedy, R. S., Human Factors Issues in Virtual Environments: A Review of the Literature. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1998, 7(4), pp. 327-351.

Singer, M. J., & Witmer, B. G. (1998), Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionnaire, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1998, 7(3), pp. 225–240.

Singer, M. J., & Witmer, B. G., On Selecting the Right Yardstick. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1999, 8(5), pp. 566-573.

Slater, M. (1999). Measuring Presence: A Response to the Witmer and Singer Presence Questionnaire, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1999, 8(5), pp. 560-566.

Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, Dec 2009, 364(1535). pp. 3549-3557

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Alternative definition I use in our classes:

    "Virtual Environment: a simulation, a totality of different sensory information coupled together in an organized way providing a meaningful context for human action and collaboration."

--------------------

Our syllabus for Human Factors in VE:

    https://www.movesinstitute.org/~amela/Teaching/index.html#MV4001

--------------------

I believe it is a great opportunity for the dissemination of information and for new ways of making research. It is also fundamental in the sense of a "digital archive" of heritage. The risks are, I guess, not larger than the ones currently faced by heritage sites worldwide...

I may be wornd, but I don't believe that many people would stop wanting to go visit "the real deal" just because they can move/play/discover around in the world's most detailed reconstruction. They are different experiences and need not be mutually exclusive.

Dear James Gjaltema, 

my suggestion is to enhance the affordance of different items of the environment (library, desks, showcases) to set landmarks that are useful to memorize routes of the campus, both for male and female).

First perspective during navigation is personal envolving due to embodied cognition but to enhance the user experience it should envolve a gamification too. 

To set a ranking with a contest which could reward with more possibility of interaction (like receiving suggestion in real time from professors of the campus) will envolve participants with a great sense of presence.

Kind Regards, 

Matteo Migliori

I would like to present my thanks for your kind concern dear Estrada, Dodiya and Sadagic. I reached all of the resources that you were suggested and currently reading them.

I'm so grateful for your responses.

Best regards,

Özge.

Thankyou for the suggestions Bob. Your thoughts were eye opening

 Dear Hani,

Im positive/absolute confidente that this will never disappear. Why? Because the "social interaction" among people is a basic need. So, IT is just providing new ways of interaction - digital ones, mobile ones. Like I simple don't believe that People will ever stop their intrinsic need of communicate, we can see in the future renewing of the approach of the development of new solution for social networking, but this is an Era that have come to stay.

Best wishes for your research, hope have not been too much philosophical 

Carlos

Hey Francesco. Thanks for reminding me of that. I just realised I have a reply on that particular strand of messages. :)

Dear @Han, yes, virtual reality is very useful for educational learning. Of course, there are some issues like "where is pedagogy"... Please, do find some research papers about the issue you have raised. 

 Hello Dr Arellano

I hope the following helps with your literature search:

McLoughlin, C., & Lee, M. J. (2010). Personalised and self regulated learning in the Web 2.0 era: International exemplars of innovative pedagogy using social software. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26(1)28-43.

Dabbagh, N., & Kitsantas, A. (2012). Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning. The Internet and higher education, 15(1), 3-8.

Prof. Azevedo is on ResearchGate and has written on this subject with various other ResearchGate members, e.g.:

Azevedo, R., Cromley, J. G., Moos, D. C., Greene, J. A., & Winters, F. I. (2011). Adaptive content and process scaffolding: A key to facilitating students’ self-regulated learning with hypermedia. Psychological Testing and Assessment Modeling, 53, 106-140.

Azevedo, R., & Hadwin, A. F. (2005). Scaffolding self-regulated learning and metacognition–Implications for the design of computer-based scaffolds. Instructional Science, 33(5), 367-379.

Three of the authors of this paper are ResearchGate members:

Dillenbourg, P., Järvelä, S., & Fischer, F. (2009). The evolution of research on computer-supported collaborative learning. In Technology-enhanced learning (pp. 3-19). Springer Netherlands.

Lee, S. W. Y., & Tsai, C. C. (2011). Students’ perceptions of collaboration, self-regulated learning, and information seeking in the context of Internet-based learning and traditional learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(2), 905-914.

This link is not for the full text:

Schober, B., Wagner, P., Reimann, R., & Spiel, C. (2008). Vienna E-Lecturing (VEL): Learning how to learn self-regulated in an Internet-based blended learning setting. International Journal on E-learning, 7(4), 703-723.

Very best wishes

Mary

Dear Margaret,

i suggest for you to engage students in different online activities and homework that you require for them to submit or create and tell them that those homeworks and assignments will be investigated and marked by you. There are different tools that your students can use such as:

Presentation Tools

             Interactive Slideshows such as (http://Prezi.com)

             Interactive Timelines  such as (http://www.timeglider.com) ,(http://www.dipity.com) ,(http://www.capzles.com/)

             Infographics such as (http://infographics.alltop.com/)

Poster Tools

              Word Clouds  such as (http://www.wordle.net/)

               Interactive Posters such as (http://www.thinglink.com/)

Stories

Story tools & Comics such as (http://www.voki.com),(http://goanimate.com/)

hope that this information was helpful

Kind Regards

Hi James,

 

Thank you for the input and apologies for my slow response – I missed any update from ResearchGate, sure they was one, they tend not to miss an opportunity to mail =]

 

The first-hand observations you did make an intriguing juxtaposition with the requirement's gathering process we used. We had to go with conversational descriptions, from volunteers in a secure setting, of their street drug-use behaviour. We were mainly looking to understand believable locations, believable characters and what they talk like - the player currently navigates in 1st-person/as-a-camera perspective. (Interestingly, on evaluating the prototype game, we got some unsolicited feedback from the volunteers on how the game-characters ‘moved’ realistically, menacing like a drug-dealer – I had just slapped-on random stock animations, time being against us!)

 

Thank you for pointing out Physical & Behavioural realism, this has opened up a new stream of investigation.

 

EV is a difficult concept at the best of times - and fitting it to simulations and serious games, is particularly spikey. In this regard I have found, flow, presence, immersion and affordance, concepts with a larger, and less contentious, body of empirical research.

 

Here are a few additional items that may be of use to anyone following this thread, the links are to external pages,

 

Frameworks to evaluate simulations,

1. van den Hoogen, J. et al;"The Debriefing of Research Games: A Structured Approach for the Validation of Gaming Simulation Outcomes", http://informs-sim.org/wsc14papers/includes/files/312.pdf

 

2. Peters, V.A.M. et al, 2004, "A simple classification model for debriefing simulation games", http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.195.1715&rep=rep1&type=pdf

 

3. Graafland, M. et al, 2014, "How to systematically assess serious games applied to health care", http://games.jmir.org/2014/2/e11/

 

Interesting interventions in Forensic Mental Health,

4. Playmancer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osmo9EAClv8

 

5.  Arborelius, L., et al, 2013, "A new interactive computer simulation system for violence risk assessment of mentally disordered violent offenders", Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 30-40.

 

& number of works from the following authors, Tobias Greitemeyer & Silvia Osswald, Giuseppe Riva, Laura Ermi & Frans Mäyrä.

We are planing to do a research on triggering facial expressions of avatars of CVEs based on EEG signal-based emotions. 

The Relationship Between Trust, Virtual Communities and e-Commerce: A Semantic Study)

The Relationship Between Trust, Virtual Communities and e-Commerce: A Semantic Study)

Computer processors are simulated as discrete systems due to their state transitions being governed by the clock. So there is no difference on simulating a MHZ or a GHz processor other than the running time of the simulation. There are many available simulators on line, some are able to simulate whole machines running Linux and others are more specific procensors internal components. You should define the specific kind of simulation you want.

A virtualization software isn't a simulator, it is a special mode of  execution of a processor which redirects some hardware instructions and contexts to a host operating system. 

Start with:

And then, to be excellent teacher, try to be different from others teachers in your environment, and engage your students to actively participate in learning/teaching. Use a constructivist approach rather than objectivist in teaching (https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_is_Objectivism_used_in_eLearning_instead_of_Constructivist_approaches). Use games and tools in teaching. Moreover, you have to love teacher’s profession, and have enough enthusiasm, time, care and passion for all kids.

seeing as they are illiterate you can make structured interviews with them after they have experienced the virtual environment. It would be preferable for them to have a task to do when in the environment as well. 

Knowledge Transfer from Virtual Environment

Trainees of high-stakes scenarios, such as firefighting drills, pilot training, and search-and-rescue exercises, benefit wildly from simulation technology and virtual environments. The learners can practice their skills more frequently and in a safer environment, and the total cost of maintaining the complex training platforms are usually much lower. Recent developments in 3D technology make virtual training even more attractive in the other sense of the word, too.

Disable the 3D effects (do you really need them?). VirtualBox does provide some degree of 3D emulation (which needs to be explicitly enabled when you configure the VM). However, do not expect this to work as well if it were running natively. You could also try one of the other VM platforms such as VMWare, Parallels (on Mac) or KVM (if you're running Linux-under-Linux).

Here you have our work related to haptic interaction, usability, guidelines.

Hi Efrén

I would really recommend Unity 3D.

Specially if you don't have to deal with complex devices or rendering devices.

It will not allow you to create 3D models, but it is the best tool I know to design a Virtual Environment.

It let's you visually design the 3D Scene. Moving, resizing, duplicating 3D objects with simple clicks...

You can also very easily implement specific behaviours or tweak your environment by adding script either in C#, JavaScript or python.

Plus the basic licence is free...

Hope it helps.

an addition:

the differences between the Microsoft SDK and openni are that:

the skeleton tracking of Microsoft SDK is clearly more stable and accurate than the one by openni. Openni has trouble with the orientation of people when turning away from the sensor, it always assumes people face towards the Kinect.

On the other hand, openNI is way more flexible and easier to program. You can

- access all data streams and information for all users that were detected.

- decide who is the active user of the system,

- use implemented gestures

- simple saving and loading of training video material

in my application, the restrictions in the Microsoft SDK made it impossible to use for my research inspite of the superiority of the tracking algorithm because of the closedness of the system.

Unity's own beginner level tutorials are rather good: http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/modules

I have been using following when giving intro to Unity: http://petrilankoski.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/introduction-to-unity/

Mentioned books are really good. I'd just add "3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice", by D. A. Bowman. In my opinion, still the best manual for 3D interaction.

We have a 360 degree CAVE in University College Dublin, (we have named it the LAIR , Lightweight Affordable Immersion Room) Its a quite unique front projected CAVE that allows a user to stand in the centre without casting a shadow. It was designed to be run using a single server machine so its a relativity cheap setup. As it runs on a single box so it can be moved around a bit , but the configuration if you used micro projectors and portable screens could be quite mobile.

University of Texas have built on this idea and other cost efficiency CAVE's and have made a 3 wall projector setup and added a really nice innovation of a 4 projector per wall setup discussed in the paper below

Also DAVE Definitely Affordable Virtual Environment. Affordable in Austria too is a great CAVE concept.

Hope that's some help to you, again if you need more information let me know.