The use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in connected environments is rarely explored but may become a necessary channel of communication in the future. Such environments would allow multiple users to interact, engage, and share multidimensional data across devices and between the spectrum of realities. However, communication between the two realities within a hybrid environment is barely understood. We carried out an experiment with 52 participants in 26 pairs, within two environments of 3D cultural artifacts: (1) a Hybrid VR and AR environment (HVAR) and (2) a Shared VR environment (SVR). We explored the differences in perceived spatial presence, copresence, and social presence between the environments and between users. We demonstrated that greater presence is perceived in SVR when compared with HVAR, and greater spatial presence is perceived for VR users. Social presence is perceived greater for AR users, possibly because they have line of sight of their partners within HVAR. We found positive correlations between shared activity time and perceived social presence. While acquainted pairs reported significantly greater presence than unacquainted pairs in SVR, there were no significant differences in perceived presence between them in HVAR.

The First Original Copy refers to any first true 3D facsimile of a digitally reproduced physical object. The notion of a copy being the first and original implies that it is unique and therefore the approach used for managing rights and ownership influences its value. Whilst virtual goods traded within virtual worlds are subject to rules and policies, the production of digital objects in the real world does not have a mechanism from which rarity and uniqueness can be guaranteed. Digital copies are subject to further copying and thus, the value of even an exact copy can never be perceived to be equivalent to its original. Through what means can we imbue 3D reproductions of cultural objects with value that is at least asymptotic to their originals? There may be a candidate solution. Discussed in this article is a possible approach for resolving a long-term issue related to authenticity, ownership, perpetuity, and the quantitative tracking of value associated with 3D copies. Blockchains essentially bring the systemic management of virtual objects within virtual worlds into the real world. This forum article examines the candidate solution by answering the questions above, and discusses the issues associated with the concept of the First Original Copy.

This article presents a detailed design, development, and implementation of a Mixed Reality Art-Science collaboration project which was exhibited during Darwin’s bicentenary exhibition at Shrewsbury, England. As an artist-led project the concerns of the artist were paramount, and this article presents Shift-Life as part of an ongoing exploration into the parallels between the nonlinear human thinking process and computation using semantic association to link items into ideas, and ideas into holistic concepts. Our art explores perceptions and states of mind as we move our attention between the simulated world of the computer and the real world we inhabit, which means that any viewer engagement is participatory rather than passive. From a Mixed Reality point of view, the lead author intends to explore the convergence of the physical and virtual, therefore the formalization of the Mixed Reality system, focusing on the integration of artificial life, ecology, physical sensors, and participant interaction through an interface of physical props. It is common for digital media artists to allow viewers to activate a work either through a computer screen via direct keyboard or mouse manipulation, or through immersive means. For “Shift-Life” the artist was concerned with a direct “relational” approach where viewers would intuitively engage with the installation’s everyday objects, and with each other, to fully experience the piece. The Mixed Reality system is mediated via physical environmental sensors, which affect the virtual environment and autonomous agents, which in turn reacts and is expressed as virtual pixels projected onto a physical surface. The tangible hands-on interface proved to be instinctive, attractive, and informative on many levels, delivering a good example of collaboration between the arts and science.

This article explores ways in which virtual environments can be used for crowdsourcing and behavior mining for filling gaps within the information space of topical research. Behavior mining in this article refers to the act of harvesting the latent or instinctive behavior of participants, usually a crowd, and injecting the population behavior into a preset context, such as within a virtual environment so that the subjective behaviors and the contexts are merged. The experimental approach combines various modalities centered upon virtual environments so as to induce presence in order to bring participants into the context. This approach is new and not well studied; however, it has real potential in research dealing with behaviors and culture in reconstructed virtual environments. Two virtual environments case studies at the 2012 and 2015 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition are presented, which demonstrate that the unique crowdsourcing activity is able to fill gaps within the information space so that answers to research questions can be more complete. Thus, by reconstructing and replicating a lost landscape, and by injecting harvested human behavior into the context of the landscape, we may be able to gather much more information than conventional methods will allow.

The fusion of Virtual Reality and Artificial Life technologies has opened up a valuable and effective technique for research in the field of dynamic archaeological reconstruction. This paper describes early evaluations of simulated vegetation and environmental models using decentralized Artificial Life entities. The results demonstrate a strong feasibility for the application of integrated VR and Artificial Life in solving a 10,000 year old mystery shrouding a submerged landscape in the Southern North Sea, off the east coast of the United Kingdom. Three experimental scenarios with dynamic, “artificial” vegetation are observed to grow, reproduce, and react to virtual environmental parameters in a way that mimics their physical counterparts. Through further experimentation and refinement of the Artificial Life rules, plus the integration of additional knowledge from subject matter experts in related scientific fields, a credible reconstruction of the ancient and, today, inaccessible landscape may be within our reach.