Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and the Metaverse for Enhanced Human Cognitive Capabilities

Dear Colleagues,

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) spaces have been noted to support a radically new and highly stimulating way of working with digital content in a variety of application domains. Even more importantly, in a practical sense, a number of recent research works have demonstrated that, besides being visually and aesthetically appealing, VR and AR also have the potential to significantly alter the way that humans conceptualize, access, organize and interact with information, thus enabling more effective digital workflows at a lower cognitive load. Based on this, it can be argued that VR/AR can be seen as the next digital platform, which can both integrate and supersede earlier, text-based and GUI-based (2D) platforms. However, further research is necessary to understand the exact factors that determine whether a specific VR/AR solution can fulfill this potential in any given application domain. In addition, understanding whether and how a VR/AR platform is uniquely suited to modeling the intentions, or, more generally, the cognitive profile of its users can further help design more intuitive user interfaces.

The goal of this Special Issue is to present original research results that can shed light on such factors, and the constraints under which they operate most effectively, depending on the medium in question (e.g., immersive versus non-immersive VR, smartphone-based or wearable AR, visual-only versus multimodal environments) and other qualities of the application scenario (e.g., number of users, asynchronous versus synchronous collaboration, and others). Thus, topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• VR/AR solutions in academia, industry, healthcare, tourism, or other domains;
• Synchronous or asynchronous collaborative VR/AR solutions;
• Design and assessment of multimodal VR scenarios;
• Modeling and assessment of user effectiveness in VR/AR, especially compared to non-VR/AR use;
• Modeling and assessment of qualitative factors in VR/AR, especially compared to non-VR/AR use;
• Modeling and assessment of cognitive aspects in VR/AR, especially compared to non-VR/AR use.

Dr. Ádám B. Csapó
Dr. Mika Luimula
Guest Editors

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