Brown Ring Experiment is a very popular test to detect the presence of Nitrate in salts commonly performed in chemical laboratories with supplies of required chemicals. Our work clears out the need for a chemical laboratory and chemicals in order to understand the experiment practically. We have used the technology of Virtual Reality to fulfill this requirement. Our research work can be extensively utilized to create virtual environments for conducting other chemical processes in a virtual environment hence, eliminating the need for a chemical laboratory. This can help students in remote areas with minimal resources to fill in the void of practical experiments they have in their learning process due to space constraints.
When establishing a visual connection between a virtual reality user and an augmented reality user, it is important to consider whether the augmented reality user faces a surplus of information. Augmented reality, compared to virtual reality, involves two, not one, planes of information: the physical and the virtual. We propose SelectVisAR, a selective visualisation system of virtual environments in augmented reality. Our system enables an augmented reality spectator to perceive a co-located virtual reality user in the context of four distinct visualisation conditions: Interactive, Proximity, …
This workshop paper presents two proxy objects for high fidelity interaction in virtual reality (VR): a paper map and a smartphone. We showcase how our virtual paper map can increase interactivity and orientation, while our virtual smartphone extends the use of a proxy object, as it allows for actual touch input on a real phone leading to an almost infinite set of possible (inter-)actions (e.g. snapping pictures in the virtual world). Observations showed that participants were very precise in holding and interacting with both the paper map and the smartphone even though they did not see their …
In this article we describe Hack.VR, an object-oriented programming game in virtual reality. Hack.VR uses a VR programming language in which nodes represent functions and node connections represent data flow. Using this programming framework, players reprogram VR objects such as elevators, robots, and switches. Hack.VR has been designed to be highly interactable both physically and semantically.
I-nteract: A cyber-physical system for real-time interaction with physical and virtual objects using mixed reality technologies for additive manufacturing
We created a hand texture resource (with different skin tone versions as well as non-human hands) for use in virtual reality studies. This makes it easier to run lab and remote studies where the hand representation is matched to the participant's own skin tone. We validate that the virtual hands with our textures align with participants view of their own real hands and allow to create VR applications where participants have an increased sense of body ownership. These properties are critical for a range of VR studies, such as of immersion.
Thanks to the eye-tracking sensors that are embedded in emerging consumer devices like the Vive Pro Eye, we demonstrate that it is feasible to deliver user authentication via eye movement biometrics.
In this position paper, we outline our research challenges in Affective Interactive Systems, and present recent work on visualizing avatar biosignals for social VR entertainment. We highlight considerations for how biosignals animations in social VR spaces can (falsely) indicate users' availability status.
This paper presents and analyses existing taxonomies of virtual and augmented reality and demonstrates knowledge gaps and mixed terminology which may cause confusion among educators, researchers, and developers. Several such occasions of confusion are presented. A methodology is then presented to construct a taxonomy of virtual reality and augmented reality applications based on a combination of: a faceted analysis approach for the overall design of the taxonomy; an existing taxonomy of educational objectives to derive the educational purpose; an information systems analysis to establish impor…
Meditation, or mindfulness, is widely used to improve mental health. With the emergence of Virtual Reality technology, many studies have provided evidence that meditation with VR can bring health benefits. However, to our knowledge, there are no guidelines and comprehensive reviews in the literature on how to conduct such research in virtual reality. In order to understand the role of VR technology in meditation and future research opportunities, we conducted a systematic literature review in the IEEE and ACM databases. Our process yielded 19 eligible papers and we conducted a structured analy…
In recent years there has been a strong development of the concept of virtual reality (VR) which from the first video games developed in the 60s has reached the current immersive systems. VR and the consequent deception of perception pose an interesting question: is it possible to deceive the mind to the point of not being able to recognize whether the perceived reality is real or simulated? In addition to this question, another question arises spontaneously: is it possible to simulate a non-reality in which the physical laws do not apply? The answer to the first question is that it would theo…
In this paper we introduce novel Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) treatments to improve the psychological well being of patients in palliative care, based on interviews with a clinical psychologist who has successfully implemented VR assisted interventions on palliative care patients in the Hong Kong hospital system. Our VR and AR assisted interventions are adaptations of traditional palliative care therapies which simultaneously facilitate patients communication with family and friends while isolated in hospital due to physical weakness and COVID-19 related restrictions. The fi…
Bionic vision is a rapidly advancing field aimed at developing visual neuroprostheses ('bionic eyes') to restore useful vision to people who are blind. However, a major outstanding challenge is predicting what people 'see' when they use their devices. The limited field of view of current devices necessitates head movements to scan the scene, which is difficult to simulate on a computer screen. In addition, many computational models of bionic vision lack biological realism. To address these challenges, we propose to embed biologically realistic models of simulated prosthetic vision (SPV) in imm…
Virtual reality technology is biased. It excludes approximately 95% the world's population by being primarily designed for male, western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic populations. This bias may be due to the lack of diversity in virtual reality researchers, research participants, developers, and end users, fueling a noninclusive research, development, and usability cycle. The objective of this paper is to highlight the minimal virtual reality research involving understudied populations with respect to dimensions of diversity, such as gender, race, culture, ethnicity, age, disabil…
Rapidly growing virtual reality (VR) technologies and techniques have gained importance over the past few years, and academics and practitioners have been searching for efficient visualizations in VR. To date, emphasis has been on the employment of game technologies. Despite the growing interest and discussion, visualization studies have lacked a common baseline in the transition period of 2D visualizations to immersive ones. To this end, the presented study aims to provide a systematic literature review that explains the state-of-the-art research and future trends on visualization in virtual …
Whole-body movements enhance the presence and enjoyment of Virtual Reality (VR) experiences. However, using large gestures is often uncomfortable and impossible in confined spaces (e.g., public transport). We introduce FingerMapper, mapping small-scale finger motions onto virtual arms and hands to enable whole-body virtual movements in VR. In a first target selection study (n=13) comparing FingerMapper to hand tracking and ray-casting, we found that FingerMapper can significantly reduce physical motions and fatigue while having a similar degree of precision. In a consecutive study (n=13), we c…
Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially Neural Networks (NNs), has become increasingly popular. However, people usually treat AI as a tool, focusing on improving outcome, accuracy, and performance while paying less attention to the representation of AI itself. We present AIive, an interactive visualization of AI in Virtual Reality (VR) that brings AI "alive". AIive enables users to manipulate the parameters of NNs with virtual hands and provides auditory feedback for the real-time values of loss, accuracy, and hyperparameters. Thus, AIive contributes an artistic and intuitive way to represent…
Haptic feedback in virtual reality (VR) allows users to perceive the physical properties of virtual objects (e.g., their weight and motion patterns). However, the lack of haptic sensations deteriorates users' immersion and overall experience. In this work, we designed and implemented a low-cost hardware prototype with liquid metal, VibroWeight, which can work in complementarity with commercial VR handheld controllers. VibroWeight is characterized by bimodal feedback cues in VR, driven by adaptive absolute mass (weights) and gravity shift. To our knowledge, liquid metal is used in a VR haptic d…
The CellxGene project has enabled access to single-cell data in the scientific community, providing tools for browsed-based no-code analysis of more than 500 annotated datasets. However, single-cell data requires dimensional reduction to visualize, and 2D embedding does not take full advantage of three-dimensional human spatial understanding and cognition. Compared to a 2D visualization that could potentially hide gene expression patterns, 3D Virtual Reality may enable researchers to make better use of the information contained within the datasets. For this purpose, we present \emph{Corvo}, a …
