Recent Advances in Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, VR and AR technology have made remarkable progress. Their fundamental problems, such as tracking and registration, have been almost solved, and their applications for education, medicine, architecture, automobiles, advertising, entertainment, etc., that researchers dreamed of 20 years ago have been put to practical use today. As some basic research has come to fruition, expectations for VR and AR have increased, and opportunities for advanced studies have also expanded. What should remote communications be when real-time three-dimensional reconstruction is realized and 5G high-speed communication becomes widespread? What information should be selected and presented to the user when advanced situational awareness becomes possible? What kind of short- and long-term effects on our body and mind will be exhibited by augmented vision or body modification? VR and AR are not just high-level computing environments but are becoming the next generation of social infrastructure. Various technologies such as artificial intelligence, human augmentation, and brain science are progressing and merging with VR and AR to become a driving force that puts VR and AR to even higher levels.

This Special Issue calls for many interesting studies that will open up new horizons of VR and AR. In addition to research that has steadily improved existing issues, we welcome research papers that present new possibilities of VR and AR. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• 360 video;
• VR/AR applications;
• Artificial intelligence/machine learning for VR/AR;
• Brain science for VR/AR;
• VR/AR collaboration;
• Computer graphics for VR/AR; 
• Computer vision for VR/AR;
• Content creation and management for VR/AR;
• Context awareness for VR/AR;
• Education with VR/AR;
• Multimodal VR/AR;
• Display technologies for VR/AR;
• Ethics/humanity in VR/AR;
• Human augmentations with VR/AR;
• Human–computer interactions in VR/AR; 
• Human factors in VR/AR;
• Perception/presence in VR/AR;
• Physiological sensing for VR/AR;
• User experience/usability in VR/AR;
• Virtual humans/avatars in VR/AR;
• Visualization/visual analytics with VR/AR;
• Wellbeing with VR/AR.

Prof. Dr. Kiyoshi Kiyokawa
Prof. Dr. Mark Billinghurst
Guest Editors

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