Investigating the Application of Virtual Reality Systems to Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience Research

With interest in virtual reality (VR) technologies, techniques, and devices growing at a quick pace, many researchers in areas such as psychology or cognitive neuroscience want to use VR. The software and VR systems available today do not support the skill sets or experimental requirements of this group of users. We describe a number of concerns and requirements that researchers express and focus on the extent to which today's VR systems support non-VR experts. The work then concludes with a number of suggestions and potential development avenues that should be undertaken to ensure that VR systems are usable by a large range of researchers, regardless of their programming skills or technical backgrounds.