Virtual Worlds, Volume 1, Issue 1 (September 2022) – 6 articles

Fully immersive virtual reality (VR) applications have modified the way people access cultural heritage—from the visiting of virtual museums containing large collections of paintings to the visiting of ancient buildings. In this paper, we propose to review the software that are currently available that deal with cultural heritage in fully immersive virtual reality. It goes beyond technologies that were available prior to virtual reality headsets, at a time where virtual was simply the synonym of the application of digital technologies to cultural heritage. We propose to group these applications depending on their content—from generic art galleries and museums to applications that focus on a single artwork or single artist. Furthermore, we review different ways to assess the performance of such applications with workload, usability, flow, and potential VR symptoms surveys. This paper highlights the progress in the implementation of applications that provide immersive learning experiences related to cultural heritage, from 360 images to photogrammetry and 3D models. The paper shows the discrepancy between available software to the general audience on various VR headsets and scholarship activities dealing with cultural heritage in VR. Full article

The purpose of the study was to understand how various aspects of virtual reality and extended reality, specifically, environmental displays (e.g., wind, heat, smell, and moisture), audio, and graphics, can be exploited to cause a good startle, or to prevent them. The TreadPort Active Wind Tunnel (TPAWT) was modified to include several haptic environmental displays: heat, wind, olfactory, and mist, resulting in the Multi-Sensory TreadPort Active Wind Tunnel (MS.TPAWT). In total, 120 participants played a VR game that contained three startling situations. Audio and environmental effects were varied in a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) study. Muscle activity levels of their orbicularis oculi, sternocleidomastoid, and trapezius were measured using electromyography (EMG). Participants then answered surveys on their perceived levels of startle for each situation. We show that adjusting audio and environmental levels can alter participants physiological and psychological response to the virtual world. Notably, audio is key for eliciting stronger responses and perceptions of the startling experiences, but environmental displays can be used to either amplify those responses or to diminish them. The results also highlight that traditional eye muscle response measurements of startles may not be valid for measuring startle responses to strong environmental displays, suggesting that alternate muscle groups should be used. The study’s implications, in practice, will allow designers to control the participants response by adjusting these settings. Full article

Emerging Virtual Reality (VR) displays with embedded eye trackers are currently becoming a commodity hardware (e.g., HTC Vive Pro Eye). Eye-tracking data can be utilized for several purposes, including gaze monitoring, privacy protection, and user authentication/identification. Identifying users is an integral part of many applications due to security and privacy concerns. In this paper, we explore methods and eye-tracking features that can be used to identify users. Prior VR researchers explored machine learning on motion-based data (such as body motion, head tracking, eye tracking, and hand tracking data) to identify users. Such systems usually require an explicit VR task and many features to train the machine learning model for user identification. We propose a system to identify users utilizing minimal eye-gaze-based features without designing any identification-specific tasks. We collected gaze data from an educational VR application and tested our system with two machine learning (ML) models, random forest (RF) and k-nearest-neighbors (kNN), and two deep learning (DL) models: convolutional neural networks (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM). Our results show that ML and DL models could identify users with over 98% accuracy with only six simple eye-gaze features. We discuss our results, their implications on security and privacy, and the limitations of our work. Full article

Industries are increasing their adoption of digital twins for their unprecedented ability to control physical entities and help manage complex systems by integrating multiple technologies. Recently, the dental industry has seen several technological advancements, but it is uncertain if dental institutions are making an effort to adopt digital twins in their education. In this work, we employ a mixed-method approach to investigate the added value of digital twins for remote learning in the dental industry. We examine the extent of digital twin adoption by dental institutions for remote education, shed light on the concepts and benefits it brings, and provide an application-based roadmap for more extended adoption. We report a review of digital twins in the healthcare industry, followed by identifying use cases and comparing them with use cases in other disciplines. We compare reported benefits, the extent of research, and the level of digital twin adoption by industries. We distill the digital twin characteristics that can add value to the dental industry from the examined digital twin applications in remote learning and other disciplines. Then, inspired by digital twin applications in different fields, we propose a roadmap for digital twins in remote education for dental institutes, consisting of examples of growing complexity. We conclude this paper by identifying the distinctive characteristics of dental digital twins for remote learning. Full article

360° 3D virtual reality (VR) video is used in education to bring immersive environments into a teaching space for learners to experience in a safe and controlled way. Within 360° 3D VR video, informational elements such as additional text, labelling and directions can be easily incorporated to augment such content. Despite this, the usefulness of this information for learners has not yet been determined. This article presents a study which aims to explore the usefulness of labelling and text within 360° stereoscopic 3D VR video content and how this contributes to the user experience. Postgraduate students from a university in the UK (n = 30) were invited to take part in the study to evaluate VR video content augmented with labels and summary text or neither of these elements. Interconnected themes associated with the user experience were identified from semi-structured interviews. From this, it was established that the incorporation of informational elements resulted in the expansion of the field of view experienced by participants. This “augmented signposting” may facilitate a greater spatial awareness of the virtual environment. Four recommendations for educators developing 360° stereoscopic 3D VR video content are presented. Full article