Search Results (49)

The growing demand for virtual reality and immersive applications has increased interest in 360° video streaming. When viewing omnidirectional content through a head-mounted display, users observe only a limited portion of the content, i.e., the viewport, at any given time. Consequently, transmitting the complete panoramic frame at uniformly high quality is bandwidth-inefficient. This review presents a system-level analysis of viewport-adaptive three-degree-of-freedom (3DoF) 360° video streaming, focusing on the coupled roles of viewport prediction, tile-based multi-rate encoding and bitrate allocation, transport mechanisms, and edge-assisted processing. The reviewed literature is examined to identify the design dependencies and trade-offs among these components. Viewport-adaptive approaches seek to reduce the bandwidth allocated to regions outside the instantaneous viewport while preserving the quality of the visible region. The analysis shows that their effectiveness cannot be attributed to prediction accuracy alone: the resulting Quality of Experience (QoE) depends jointly on tile granularity, bitrate allocation, buffer occupancy, transport delay, and whether prioritized tiles arrive before their playback deadlines. Finer tiling can improve spatial selectivity but increases coding, signaling, and request overhead. Moreover, HTTP/2, HTTP/3/QUIC, RTP/RTSP, and WebRTC present different reliability, latency, congestion-control, and scalability trade-offs across buffered video-on-demand, low-latency live streaming, and interactive immersive applications. Based on this synthesis, the review formulates a unified closed-loop cross-layer framework that coordinates prediction, tiling, bitrate allocation, request timing, transport configuration, buffering, and edge processing under bandwidth, latency, and resource constraints. Full article

Byzantine theological education often focuses on textual abstraction, frequently failing to convey the tradition’s embodied, spatial, and liturgical depths. This mixed-methods case study examined whether immersive virtual reality (IVR) could bridge this divide. A total of thirty (n = 30) graduate theology students were invited to navigate a bespoke reconstruction of a Byzantine church—modeled on the Chora Monastery—using Meta Quest 3 headsets (Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, standalone inside-out tracking). Following a 25 min immersive session, participants completed usability assessments, semi-structured interviews, and observational documentation. Quantitative data revealed above-average system usability (M = 72.50, SD = 5.18), significantly exceeding the standard 68-point usability benchmark, t(29) = 4.760, p < 0.001, d = 0.869, and intuitive navigation even among IVR novices (63.3% of participants completed the guided task sequence with zero errors). Through thematic analysis, six key dimensions of the experience—spatial presence, theological meaning-making, navigational ease, interaction affordances, pedagogical limitations, and technical constraints—were identified. Participants described the sense of ‘immersive presence’ as transformative and reported that it helped them correct prior spatial misconceptions and deepened their affective engagement with the liturgy. However, they also identified significant pedagogical hurdles. The lack of collaborative features was described as “theologically incomplete,” while the absence of multisensory elements—specifically scent—created a noticeable liturgical void. Furthermore, participants highlighted an unresolved tension between the experience’s devotional immersion and the critical distance required for academic study. The findings suggest that if IVR can support theological education effectively, future digital architectures may need to go beyond technical functionality to prioritize communal presence, contemplative pacing, and scaffolded criticality. This single-case, non-comparative design does not test IVR’s efficacy relative to physical site visits or 360° video. It instead establishes baseline usability and experiential evidence to inform such comparisons in future research. Full article

This exploratory research investigates the perceived educational potential of visual, spatial, and auditory immersions as integral components of innovative healthcare simulation technologies. The study examines user experiences in learning health assessment concepts through purposefully designed 360° immersive virtual reality video (360° IVRV). Utilizing a case-study approach, insights were gathered from four subject-matter experts and four doctoral students regarding the perceived effectiveness of 360° IVRV for instructional activities focused on patient health assessment, commonly known as the Onset, Location, Duration, Characteristics, Aggravating/Alleviating factors, Related symptoms, Treatment, and Severity method (OLD CARTS). The research aimed to enhance the accessibility of learning materials by optimizing 360° IVRV content for personal phones and mobile devices, accommodating both online and traditional instructional formats. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using qualitative data analysis software, with results categorized into subthemes, themes, and perspectives. The findings highlight the distinct perceived advantages of immersive technologies in advancing teaching methods for nursing practitioners. The discussion addresses concerns related to integrating 360° IVRV simulation technology in nursing education and the limitations of current instructional interventions. Practical implications for future research, design, and development of immersive learning materials and their integration with instructional design elements are emphasized. Full article

Background: Virtual reality (VR) is a promising technology for the relief of physical and psychosocial burdens. We found that individualised VR videos were well tolerated and accepted and seemed to have a stronger effect on well-being and emotional connection than standardised VR in cancer inpatients under palliative care. For implementation, it is important to actively involve patients, as their input helps to ensure that the VR intervention meets their needs, thus making it more likely to be accepted and effective in practice, while balancing the needs of healthcare professionals. Aim: Exploration of patients’ and healthcare professionals’ perspectives on best practice VR intervention implementation. Design: Workshop-based 360° focus group using a strengths–weaknesses–opportunities–threats (SWOT) model and deductive/inductive qualitative analysis with a ‘framework’ approach. Setting/participants: The focus group took place at the National Centre for Tumour Therapy of a German university hospital. Participants were a local doctor (1) and nurses (3) with VR experience, the cooperating patient advisory board of the study (2), and members of a regional self-help group (3). Results: Eighteen subthemes were identified in the SWOT model. While there was agreement on the ‘strength of distraction’ and ‘opportunities of individualised VR’, concerns remained regarding data protection when using private VR content. There was an argument about gatekeeping by relatives worried about mental distress in patients immersing in home or family VR scenes. In contrast, many ideas were discussed regarding how to overcome rejectionist staff attitudes. However, the high organisational time and staff deployment were addressed as major weaknesses. Conclusions: Involving patient stakeholders and healthcare professionals in the planning of the implementation strategy revealed several issues that require attention. In particular, information needs to be provided not only to patients but also to relatives and hospital staff, alongside ensuring data protection and adequate staffing. Trial registration: Registered at German Clinical Trials Register (Deutsches Register Klinischer Studien; DRKS); registration number: DRKS00032172; registration date: 11 July 2023. Full article

Shared immersive environment sports venues, virtual classrooms, and collaborative workspaces require multiple users to stream 360° videos simultaneously over the same edge network, yet every existing adaptive bitrate system optimises each viewer in isolation. This self-interested behaviour triggers a bandwidth auction that chronically starves the most uncertain viewers: Jain’s Fairness Index for ten independently optimised agents routinely falls below 0.85. We present FairEdge360, a hierarchical multi-agent reinforcement learning framework that reformulates multi-user 360° streaming as a Decentralised Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (Dec-POMDP) and proves, formally, that fairness and quality are complementary rather than competing objectives. Three tightly coupled innovations make this possible. First, a Lightweight Uncertainty Estimator (LUE) a compact 8385-parameter four-layer MLP evaluates per-device viewport prediction confidence $c_t^i=\sigma \left(w_4^{\top }{h}_3\right)$ in under approximately 2.1 ms on commodity smartphones (95th percentile, iPhone 12 A14 Bionic), enabling selective edge offloading that reduces device energy consumption by 38.9%. Second, a variational Graph Neural Network compresses each agent’s 256-dimensional GRU state into a 32-byte INT8 latent, transmitted over a dynamic RTT-gated neighbourhood graph at 96 bytes per agent per 500 ms 75% less overhead than competing approaches. Third, the edge coordinator maximises the Nash social welfare objective $\mathrm{NSW}={\left({\prod }_{i=1}^N{Q}_i\right)}^{1/N}$, whose gradient $\partial \mathrm{NSW}/\partial Q_i\propto 1/Q_i$ automatically prioritises the most disadvantaged viewer; a formal proof guarantees that every Pareto-optimal policy satisfies $Q_i/{\sum }_j{Q}_j\ge 1/N$. Counterfactual advantage estimation correctly attributes each agent’s marginal contribution to the global reward, eliminating the credit-assignment ambiguity inherent in standard multi-agent baselines. Evaluated on 284 users, 52 omnidirectional videos, and 10,000 real network traces spanning 4G LTE, 5G mmWave, HSDPA, and campus WiFi, FairEdge360 raises Jain’s Fairness Index from 0.934 to 0.976 (+4.5%), improves worst-case user quality-of-experience from MOS 2.54 to MOS 3.21 (+26.4%), and halves rebuffering rate from 2.1% to 1.1%, all within a 20 ms motion-to-photon budget on a commodity smartphone. Full article

Current 360-degree video streaming systems consider viewport prediction, adaptive bitrate allocation, tile selection, and quality-of-experience (QoE) estimation as independent activities, yielding fragmented pipelines that do not scale well across content type and network conditions and do not scale well to individual users. We propose ImmerseFM-3D, a foundation model that jointly solves all four sub-tasks through a single shared representation. Seven input modalities, namely video frames, network traces, head-motion trajectories, ambisonics audio, depth maps, eye-tracking signals, and CLIP scene semantics, are fused by four-layer cross-modal attention and compressed into a 256-dimensional bottleneck latent via a variational information bottleneck. Four task-specific decoders operate on this shared latent simultaneously. A model-agnostic meta-learning adapter augmented with episodic memory and a hypernetwork personalizes the model from as little as 1 s of user interaction data. An extended branch supports six-degrees-of-freedom volumetric content through spherical harmonic viewport decoding and depth-aware tile importance weighting. Trained and evaluated on the IMMERSE-1M combined dataset (1000 h of 360° and volumetric video, 524 users, and over 50,000 mean opinion scores), ImmerseFM-3D reduces the mean angular viewport error by 34%, lowers the bandwidth violation rate from 8.3% to 3.1%, and achieves a QoE Pearson correlation of 0.891. The personalization adapter reaches 90% of peak performance in 22 s, while zero-shot cross-format transfer attains 72% of full in-domain accuracy. Full article

Urban waterfront walkways are everyday public built environments where people commonly engage in slow walking, yet evidence remains limited that links what pedestrians see to immediate psychophysiological responses under controlled first-person dynamic exposure. To address this gap, we developed a fixed-speed, fixed-duration VR walk-through model using real-world 360° panoramic video and quantified scene visual composition via computer vision-based image analysis. Based on the visible shares of key components (greenery, water, sky, hardscape, and built structures), clips were grouped into four interpretable waterfront typologies: Vegetation-Enclosed, Built-Dominant, Hardscape-Plaza, and Blue-Open. Fifty healthy adults completed within-subject VR exposures to the four typologies (50 s per clip), while multimodal physiological signals and brief affect and landscape ratings were collected before and after exposure. The results showed that scenes with more water and vegetation coverage, along with expansive views, were associated with promoted autonomic nervous system calming responses, whereas scenes with fewer natural elements and higher built structure density were more likely to induce tension responses. Negative emotions decreased significantly across all four scene experiences, though artificial scenes concurrently exhibited emotional improvement alongside physiological tension. Overall, brief first-person dynamic VR exposure can yield immediate emotional benefits, and waterfront designs combining water proximity, abundant greenery, and expansive vistas may maximize short-term restorative potential, offering quantitative targets for health-supportive planning and retrofitting. Full article

With the proliferation of 5G, wireless networks, and other infrastructure, 360° video streaming has experienced rapid development. Efficient scheduling of 360° video streams relies on accurate feedback of user-side Quality of Experience (QoE), necessitating the construction of more precise QoE assessment methods. However, the existing tile-based QoE assessment methods for 360° video streaming have several limitations. First, full-reference video quality assessment methods require additional overhead to transmit the source video as a reference. Second, many learning-based methods are too complex. This high complexity results in heavy computational costs during training, reducing their practicality in scenarios requiring frequent model adaptation. Third, some methods rely only on simple indicators like bitrate and stall duration or spatial features in isolation. They ignore the spatio-temporal coupling inherent in 360° videos, which reduces the QoE assessment accuracy. To sum up, there is a lack of a lightweight QoE assessment method that can effectively integrate multidimensional influencing factors like the spatio-temporal features of 360° video and network state. A matching QoE assessment dataset is also missing. Therefore, focusing on tile-based 360° video streaming, this paper proposes a QoE assessment method named STGCN360. This method comprehensively considers multidimensional influencing factors, including network state and the spatio-temporal features of the video stream. To reduce complexity, it limits spatio-temporal graph modeling to the key tiles within the user’s viewport, avoiding the need to process all tiles. Then, a spatio-temporal graph convolutional network (STGCN) is employed to train the QoE assessment model. Furthermore, we integrate multi-source heterogeneous datasets through feature engineering, enabling the simultaneous representation of both video quality and multidimensional factors to support the training of STGCN360. The experimental results indicate that, compared to the existing methods, STGCN360 enables more accurate QoE assessment for 360° video streaming, improving accuracy by approximately 30.79% to 32.07%. Simultaneously, the training time cost is significantly reduced, with training efficiency improved by approximately 3.7 to 5.1 times. Full article

Virtual reality (VR) has existed in the realm of education for over half a century; however, it has never achieved widespread adoption. This was traditionally attributed to costs and usability problems associated with these technologies, but a new generation of consumer VR headsets has helped mitigate these issues to a large degree. Arguably, the greater barrier is now the overhead involved in creating educational VR content, the process of which has remained largely unchanged. In this paper, we investigate the use of ${360}^{\circ }$ video as an alternative way of producing educational VR content with a much lower barrier to entry. We report on the differences in user experience between ${360}^{\circ }$ and standard desktop video. We also compare the short- and long-term learning retention of tertiary students who viewed the same video recordings but watched them in either ${360}^{\circ }$ or standard video formats. Our results indicate that students retain an equal amount of information from either video format but perceive ${360}^{\circ }$ video to be more enjoyable and engaging, and would prefer to use it as additional learning resources in their coursework. Full article

With the rapid development of multimedia services and smart devices, 360-degree video has enhanced the user viewing experience, ushering in a new era of immersive human–computer interaction. These technologies are increasingly integrating everyday life, including gaming, education, and healthcare. However, the uneven spatiotemporal distribution of wireless resources presents significant challenges for the transmission of ultra-high-definition 360-degree video streaming. To address this issue, this paper proposes a multi-layer non-uniform coding-based adaptive transmission method for 360° video (MNCATM). This method optimizes video caching and transmission by dividing non-uniform tiles and leveraging users’ dynamic field of view (FoV) information and the multi-bitrate characteristics of video content. First, the video transmission process is formalized and modeled, and an adaptive transmission optimization framework for a non-uniform video is proposed. Based on this, the optimization problem required by the paper is summarized, and an algorithm is proposed to solve the problem. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed method, MNCATM, outperforms existing transmission schemes in terms of bandwidth utilization and user quality of experience (QoE). MNCATM can effectively utilize network bandwidth, reduce latency, improve transmission efficiency, and maximize user experience quality. Full article

Background: Since laparoscopic surgery became the gold standard for colorectal procedures, specific skills are required to achieve good outcomes. The best way to acquire basic and advanced skills and reach the learning curve plateau is by using dedicated simulators: box-trainers, video-trainers and virtual reality simulators. Laparoscopic skills training outside the operating room is cost-beneficial, faster and safer, and does not harm the patient. When compared to box-trainers, virtual reality simulators and cadaver models have no additional benefits. Several laparoscopic trainers available on the market as well as homemade box and video-trainers, most of them using plastic boxes and standard webcams, were described in the literature. The majority of them involve training on a flat surface without any anatomical environment. In addition to their demonstrated benefits, box-trainers which add anatomic details can improve the training quality and skills development of surgeons. Methods: We created a 3D-printed anatomic pelvi-trainer which offers a real-size narrow pelvic space environment for training. The model was created starting with a CT-scan performed on a female pelvis from the Anatomy Museum (Cluj-Napoca University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania), using Invesalius 3 software (Centro de Tecnologia da informação Renato Archer CTI, InVesalius open-source software, Campinas, Brazil) for segmentation, Fusion 360 with Netfabb software (Autodesk software company, Fusion 360 with Netfabb, San Francisco, CA, USA) for 3D modeling and a FDM technology 3D printer (Stratasys 3D printing company, Fortus 380mc 3D printer, Minneapolis, MN, USA). In addition, a metal mold for casting silicone valves was made for camera and endoscopic instruments ports. The trainer was tested and compared using a laparoscopic camera, a standard full HD webcam and “V-Box” (INTECH—Innovative Training Technologies, Milano, Italia), a dedicated hard paper box. The pelvi-trainer was tested by 33 surgeons with different qualifications and expertise. Results: We made a complete box-trainer with a versatile 3D-printed pelvi-trainer inside, designed for a wide range of basic and advanced laparoscopic skills training in the narrow pelvic space. We assessed the feedback of 33 surgeons regarding their experience using the anatomic 3D-printed pelvi-trainer for laparoscopic surgery training in the narrow pelvic space. Each surgeon tested the pelvi-trainer in three different setups: using a laparoscopic camera, using a webcam connected to a laptop and a “V-BOX” hard paper box. In the experiments that were performed, each participant completed a questionnaire regarding his/her experience using the pelvi-trainer. The results were positive, validating the device as a valid tool for training. Conclusions: We validated the anatomic pelvi-trainer designed by our team as a valuable alternative for basic and advanced laparoscopic surgery training outside the operating room for pelvic organs procedures, proving that it supports a much faster learning curve for colorectal procedures without harming the patients. Full article

In neuropsychology and clinical psychology, the efficacy of virtual reality (VR) experiences for knowledge acquisition and the potential for modifying conduct are well documented. Consequently, the scope of VR experiences for educational purposes has expanded in the health field in recent years. In this study, we sought to assess the effectiveness of ViveDe in a psychoeducational caregiver program. ViveDe is a VR application that presents users with possible daily life situations from the perspective of individuals with dementia. These situations can be experienced in immersive mode through 360° video. This research aimed to ascertain the associations between the sense of presence that can be achieved in VR and some users’ psychological characteristics, such as distress and empathetic disposition. The study involved 36 informal caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease. These participants were assessed using scales of anxiety and depression, perceived stress, empathy, and emotional regulation. They were asked to participate in a six-session psychoeducation program conducted online on dementia topics, in addition to experiencing the ViveDe application. The immersive VR sessions enabled the caregivers to directly experience the symptoms of dementia (e.g., spatial disorientation, agnosia, difficulty in problem-solving, and anomia) in everyday and social settings. The results indicated that although the experience in ViveDe (evaluated using the XRPS scale and five questions about emotional attunement) showed efficacy in producing a sense of first-person participation in the symptoms of dementia, further research is needed to confirm this. The structural equation model provided evidence that the characteristics of individuals who enjoy the VR experience play a determining role in the perceived sense of presence, which in turn affects the efficacy of the VR experience as a psychoeducational tool. Further research will be conducted to ascertain the potential role of these elements in conveying change in the caregivers of people with dementia. This will help us study the long-term effectiveness of a large-scale psychoeducation program in VR. Full article

A 360° video offers a more immersive experience, gaining increasing popularity among users. However, enhancing the transmission efficiency of 360° videos under limited bandwidth conditions remains a significant challenge. This paper segments the video into three areas: the attention area, the edge area, and the viewpoint-switching transition area. Based on the segmentation of these three distinct video areas, a novel non-uniform coding transmission method for 360° videos is presented, along with mathematical modeling to define the optimization problem. A heuristic algorithm is subsequently introduced, which adaptively determines the optimal number of tiles and allocates the bitrate for each tile in real time to enhance the user’s quality of experience (QoE). Finally, a simulation platform has been developed to validate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm by conducting comparative analyses with existing algorithms. Full article

Rehabilitation involves all types of patients, including people with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is considered a complex syndrome characterized in general by fundamental and characteristic distortions of thinking and perception. The quality of life of a person with schizophrenia can be compromised by difficulty in carrying out their daily tasks and by the social stigma of their condition. The importance of training and sensitizing students in rehabilitation areas to this type of problem to improve the rehabilitation processes in which they will participate as future professionals involves empathy and the ability to communicate with these populations. It is possible through virtual reality to create immersive environments to simulate some psychotic symptoms characteristic of people with schizophrenia, such as visual hallucinations and hearing voices. The aim of this study was to test the effect of exposure to experiences characteristic of schizophrenia through two different types of immersive environments, graphical computational virtual reality and 360° video, on students from areas of social rehabilitation regarding empathy, social distance, and attitudes towards people with schizophrenia. Although the results were positive for the three parameters under study, no significant differences were found for each of them between the environments to which the participants were exposed. This study concluded that the choice between the two types of immersive environments should be based on the project’s objectives, the target audience’s needs, and available resources, rather than the type of environment itself, as their impact was similar. Full article

Virtual Reality is an effective technique for eliciting emotions. It provides immersive and ecologically valid emotional experiences while maintaining experimental control. Recently, novel VR forms like 360° videos have been used successfully for emotion elicitation. Some preliminary databases of 360° videos for emotion elicitation have been proposed, but they tapped mainly into an emotional dimensional approach and did not include a concurrent physiological assessment of an emotional profile. This study expands on these databases by combining dimensional and discrete approaches to validate a new set of 360° emotion-inducing images. Twenty-six participants viewed 46 immersive images, and their emotional reactions were measured using self-reporting, psychophysiological signals, and eye tracking. The IAVRS database can successfully elicit a wide range of emotional responses, including both positive and negative valence, as well as different levels of arousal. Results reveal an important correspondence between the discrete and dimensional models of emotions. Furthermore, the images that exhibit convergence between the dimensional and discrete emotional models are particularly impactful regarding arousal and valence values. The IAVRS database provides insights into potential relationships between physiological parameters and emotional responses. This preliminary investigation highlights the complexity of emotional elicitation processes and their physiological correlates, suggesting the need for further research to deepen our understanding. Full article