LifeXR: Concepts, Technology and Design for Everyday XR

Dear Colleagues,

With the introduction of inexpensive lines of head-mounted displays circa 2012, the craze surrounding virtual reality (VR), with rosy prospects as the most promising and exciting future media form, was rekindled yet again. It also has sparked huge investments and further quick developments of related products, software, contents, devices, and sensors, and has even helped instigate a similar phenomenon for augmented reality (AR).

After about a decade, while VR/AR may have managed to become important media technologies for use in the industrial sector, the “consumer”-level mass market VR/AR has not become a reality. This Special Issue explores the concept of "LifeXR", namely, asking questions of where the current state of XR (i.e., VR/AR/AVR) stands in our everyday life for the average consumer, and exploring ways to make it happen. As an example, leveraging upon smartphones and extending the mobile XR platforms to be more usable and inexpensive would be one important way to realize LifeXR. Taking advantage of the recent 5G everywhere communication and IoT devices to secure the needed computational power to support realism and immersive user experience of the LifeXR platforms could be another. The types of content should go beyond typical areas such as games, training, and medicine to be used on a daily basis by the average users—their themes should be found in the midst of our daily lives.

In essence, we ask how can VR/AR or LifeXR improve the quality of human lives and make our mundane daily routines more exciting?

We invite papers that address the conceptualization of LifeXR, technologies specific to LifeXR, and design solutions to LifeXR including but not limited to:

•  New mobile XR/LifeXR platforms;
•  Usability of mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  User experience of mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  Sickness in mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  Interaction design for mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  Interfaces for mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  Tracking for mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  Context awareness for mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  5G for mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  IoT for mobile XR/LifeXR;
•  Multimode XR and LifeXR;
•  Multitasking LifeXR;
•  LifeXR applications;
•  LifeXR in everyday spaces (vehicle, office, kitchen, living room, restaurant, bed, etc.).

Prof. Dr. Dongsik Jo
Prof. Dr. Gerard J. Kim
Dr. Jae-in Hwang
Guest Editors

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