Virtual Reality (VR) is used for a variety of applications ranging from entertainment to psychological medicine. VR has been demonstrated to influence higher order cognitive functions and cortical plasticity, with implications on phobia and stroke treatment. An integral part for successful VR is a high sense of presence – a feeling of ‘being there’ in the virtual scenario. The underlying cognitive and perceptive functions causing presence in VR scenarios are however not completely known. It is evident that the brain function is influenced by drugs, such as ethanol, potentially confounding cortical plasticity, also in VR. As ethanol is ubiquitous and forms part of daily life, understanding the effects of ethanol on presence and user experience, the attitudes and emotions about using VR applications, is important. This exploratory study aims at contributing towards an understanding of how low-dose ethanol intake influences presence, user experience and their relationship in a validated VR context. It was found that low-level ethanol consumption did influence presence and user experience, but on a minimal level. In contrast, correlations between presence and user experience were strongly influenced by low-dose ethanol. Ethanol consumption may consequently alter cognitive and perceptive functions related to the connections between presence and user experience.
Innovative products are interacting with the users based on smart sensors and algorithms. Logistics as one example is changing when automated guided vehicles are integrated in the process, supporting or even replacing workers. The way these products are interacting with humans and how they react to certain situations, will determine usability and user experience and therefore the success of use. Developing such products is based on innovative concepts that need to be evaluated and refined at early project stages. Using virtual-reality based user scenarios is one adequate option to do so. This paper describes technical as well as study-based approaches on how potential concepts are realized as virtual prototypes and evaluated by real users. It concludes with the evaluation results of a pilot study but also with general limitations and benefits as best practice advice for this kind of virtual prototyping techniques.
Virtual Reality (VR) is applied in various areas were a high User Experience is essential. The sense of Presence while being in VR and its relation to User Experience therefore form crucial aspects, which are yet to be understood. This study aims at quantifying age and gender effects on this connection, involving 57 participants in VR, and performing a geocaching game using a mobile phone as experimental task to answer questionnaires measuring Presence (ITC-SOPI), User Experience (UEQ) and Usability (SUS). A higher Presence was found for the older participants, but there was no gender difference nor any interaction effects of age and gender. These findings are contractionary to preexisting limited work which has shown higher Presence for males and decreases of Presence with age. Four aspects discriminating this study from literature are discussed as explanations and as a starting point for future investigations into the topic. The results further showed higher ratings in favor of User Experience and lower ratings towards Usability for the older participants.
Keeping track of locations across self-motion is possible by continuously updating spatial representations or by encoding and later instantaneously retrieving spatial representations. In virtual reality (VR), sensory cues to self-motion used in continuous updating are typically reduced. In passive translation compared to real walking in VR, optic flow is available but body-based (idiothetic) cues are missing. With both kinds of translation, boundaries and landmarks as static visual cues can be used for instantaneous updating. In two experiments, we let participants encode two target locations, one of which had to be reproduced by pointing after forward translation in immersive VR (HMD). We increased sensory cues to self-motion in comparison to passive translation either by strengthening optic flow or by real walking. Furthermore, we varied static visual cues in the form of boundaries and landmarks inside boundaries. Increased optic flow and real walking did not reliably increase performance suggesting that optic flow even in a sparse environment was sufficient for continuous updating or that merely instantaneous updating took place. Boundaries and landmarks, however, did support performance as quantified by decreased bias and increased precision, particularly if they were close to or even enclosed target locations. Thus, enriched spatial context is a viable method to support spatial updating in VR and synthetic environments (teleoperation). Spatial context does not only provide a static visual reference in offline updating and continuous allocentric self-location updating but also, according to recent neuroscientific evidence on egocentric bearing cells, contributes to continuous egocentric location updating as well.
Virtual and augmented reality are two big buzzwords in the industrial context and they are increasingly used. A main argument for the use of virtual techniques are their economic benefits, which are confirmed by pilot studies. However there is a research gap on how virtual techniques influence the user. This study addresses the impacts of virtual environments on presence, usability and user experience compared to a real environment. Therefore two groups of participants take part in a geocaching tour through the real or virtual city center of Chemnitz and rate the presence of the environment as well as the usability and user experience of a mobile navigation application. The results of 60 participants show that there are general differences between the environments and verify the strengths and weaknesses of virtual environments: Virtual techniques have a positive influence on the user, like a more engaging experience and a perceived higher hedonic quality of the product. Beside these benefits the negative effects have to be considered too, because they influence the ratings of the user. This study shows the potential of virtual techniques for the user and also the deficits, that need to be improved.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.