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 usefulness of auricular muscle activation as a means of selection and activation of objects or locations is investigated. We find that in nearly half of those studied, use of this latent communication channel expands total expression channel capacity. A method is described that detects tension in auricular muscles, which is used to signify intent. This intent signal is then transmitted on the person's visual attention vector to select, activate, and control objects in an environment.

The past decade has seen the emergence of rehabilitation treatments using virtual reality environments. One of the main advantages of using this technology is that it creates positive motivation. Currently, most virtual-reality-based games for children are not suitable for use in a therapeutic setting. This case study reports on the use of Growing with Timocco, a specially devised virtual reality computer game, as part of an occupational therapy regimen that addressed the developmental needs of a five-year-old patient diagnosed with dyspraxia, impaired postural structure, weak shoulder, and insufficient bilateral integration, bilateral coordination, and proprioception regulation. Developed specifically for use by occupational therapists and caregivers working with children, Growing with Timocco is equipped to provide exercises for both cognitive and motor skills, but most importantly, it provides a positive setting for this practice, by harnessing the advantages of VR to promote play, pleasure, and motivation.

The inherent challenges and opportunities of mobile services design have recently led designers to embrace the theory of presence, as evidenced by recent white papers. However, our research finds that presence is a much richer theoretical construct than these studies suggest. Building on this viewpoint and drawing on prior communication research, we more fully explore the application of three types of presence—physical presence, social presence, and self-presence—to mobile services design and to the corresponding opportunities for value creation. We present a series of design challenges for mobility and identify opportunities for overcoming these challenges by incorporating presence. The implications of designing with presence are (1) a greater awareness of and response to the users' needs and behaviors; (2) strategies for design that leverage this awareness; and (3) methods for integrating unique features of mobile devices based on user-driven and environment-driven factors rather than technology-driven factors. Our research suggests the development of middle-range theories of presence for specific application domains such as mobility that combine theoretical aspects of presence theory with the real-world design factors of mobile services. Numerous real-world examples illustrate both the complete nature of presence and its application to mobile services.

This paper proposes a virtual environment system called a lightweight affordable immersion room (LAIR) that we propose for use in space and financially constrained situations. The LAIR consists of four walls arranged in a square providing a 360° degree view. By using front projection and two projectors per wall, the LAIR provides a compact environment which gives users some freedom of movement. The LAIR may be considered in terms of performance and cost as somewhere between a power wall and a CAVE—more immersive than a power wall, but less than a CAVE—and similarly moderate in terms of use of space and cost.

In 1960 Rudolph E. Kalman published his now famous article describing a recursive solution to the discrete-data linear filtering problem (Kalman, “A new approach to linear filtering and prediction problems,” Transactions of the ASME—Journal of Basic Engineering, 82 (D), 35–45, 1960). Since that time, due in large part to advances in digital computing, the Kalman filter has been the subject of extensive research and applications, particularly in the area of autonomous or assisted navigation. The purpose of this paper is to acknowledge the approaching 50th anniversary of the Kalman filter with a look back at the use of the filter for human motion tracking in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). In recent years there has been an explosion in the use of the Kalman filter in VR/AR. In fact, at technical conferences related to VR these days, it would be unusual to see a paper on tracking that did not use some form of a Kalman filter, or draw comparisons to those that do. As such, rather than attempt a comprehensive survey of all uses of the Kalman filter to date, what follows focuses primarily on the early discovery and subsequent period of evolution of the Kalman filter in VR, along with a few examples of modern commercial systems that use the Kalman filter. This paper begins with a very brief introduction to the Kalman filter, a brief look at the origins of VR, a little about tracking in VR—in particular the work and conditions that gave rise to the use of the filter, and then the evolution of the use of the filter in VR.

This paper examines some of the increasingly sophisticated attempts by humans to evoke the presence of themselves or others after death and considers these efforts in the context of telepresence theory and research. Potential future research and ethical implications are also addressed.

The suggestion that the body surface might be used as an additional means of presenting information to human-machine operators has been around in the literature for nearly 50 years. Although recent technological advances have made the possibility of using the body as a receptive surface much more realistic, the fundamental limitations on the human information processing of tactile stimuli presented across the body surface are, however, still largely unknown. This literature review provides an overview of studies that have attempted to use vibrotactile interfaces to convey information to human operators. The importance of investigating any possible central cognitive limitations (i.e., rather than the peripheral limitations, such as related to sensory masking, that were typically addressed in earlier research) on tactile processing for the most effective design of body interfaces is highlighted. The applicability of the constraints emerging from studies of tactile processing under conditions of unisensory (i.e., purely tactile) stimulus presentation, to more ecologically valid conditions of multisensory stimulation, is also discussed. Finally, the results obtained from recent studies of tactile information processing under conditions of multisensory stimulation are described, and their implications for haptic/tactile interface design elucidated.

The problems of valid design of questionnaires and analysis of ordinal response data from questionnaires have had a long history in the psychological and social sciences. Gardner and Martin (2007, this issue) illustrate some of these problems with reference to an earlier paper (Garau, Slater, Pertaub, & Razzaque, 2005) that studied copresence with virtual characters within an immersive virtual environment. Here we review the critique of Gardner and Martin supporting their main arguments. However, we show that their critique could not take into account the historical circumstances of the experiment described in the paper, and moreover that a reanalysis using more appropriate statistical methods does not result in conclusions that are different from those reported in the original paper. We go on to argue that in general such questionnaire data is treated far too seriously, and that a different paradigm is needed for presence research—one where multivariate physiological and behavioral data is used alongside subjective and questionnaire data, with the latter not having any specially privileged role.

Likert scaled data, which are frequently collected in studies of interaction in virtual environments, demand specialized statistical tools for analysis. The routine use of statistical methods appropriate for continuous data in this context can lead to significant inferential flaws. Likert scaled data are ordinal rather than interval scaled and need to be analyzed using rank based statistical procedures that are widely available. Likert scores are “lumpy” in the sense that they cluster around a small number of fixed values. This lumpiness is made worse by the tendency for subjects to cluster towards either the middle or the extremes of the scale. We suggest an ad hoc method to deal with such data which can involve a further lumping of the results followed by the application of nonparametric statistics. Averaging Likert scores over several different survey questions, which is sometimes done in studies of interaction in virtual environments, results in a different sort of lumpiness. The lumped variables which are obtained in this manner can be quite murky and should be used with great caution, if at all, particularly if the number of questions over which such averaging is carried out is small.

In the natural world, the human eye is confronted with a wide range of colors and luminances. A surface lit by moonlight might have a luminance level of around 10 −3 cd/m 2 , while surfaces lit during a sunny day could reach values larger than 10 5 cd/m 2 . A good quality CRT (cathode ray tube) or LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor is only able to achieve a maximum luminance of around 200 to 300 cd/m 2 and a contrast ratio of not more than two orders of magnitude. In this context the contrast ratio or dynamic range is defined as the ratio of the highest to the lowest luminance. We call high dynamic range (HDR) images, those images (or scenes) in which the contrast ratio is larger than what a display can reproduce. In practice, any scene that contains some sort of light source and shadows is HDR. The main problem with HDR images is that they cannot be displayed, therefore although methods to create them do exist (by taking multiple photographs at different exposure times or using computer graphics 3D software for example) it is not possible to see both bright and dark areas simultaneously. (See Figure 1.) There is data that suggests that our eyes can see detail at any given adaptation level within a contrast of 10,000:1 between the brightest and darkest regions of a scene. Therefore an ideal display should be able to reproduce this range. In this review, we present two high dynamic range displays developed by Brightside Technologies (formerly Sunnybrook Technologies) which are capable, for the first time, of linearly displaying high contrast images. These displays are of great use for both researchers in the vision/graphics/VR/medical fields as well as professionals in the VFX/gaming/architectural industry.

Presence research relies heavily on empirical experiments involving subjects in mediated environments. Since presence is a complex, multidimensional concept, experiments on presence can be extremely resource intensive and produce large amounts of data of different types. As the presence community matures, we would like to suggest that data collected in experiments be made publicly available to the community. This will allow the verification of experimental results, comparison of results of experiments carried out in different laboratories, and evaluation of new data-analysis methods. This will, eventually, lead to consistency in approaches and increased confidence in results. In this paper we present the complete dataset from a large-scale experiment that we have carried out in highly immersive virtual reality. We describe the data we have gathered and give examples of the types of analysis that can be made based on that data.

This paper is the second part of a two part paper that documents a detailed survey of the research carried out on consistency and latency in distributed interactive applications (DIAs) in recent decades. Part I reviewed the terminology associated with DIAs and offered definitions for consistency and latency. A classification for consistency maintenance mechanisms was given and various mechanisms belonging to the first of three categories, time management, were described. Here, in the second part of the paper, the remaining two categories of mechanisms are examined—information management (such as predictive contract techniques, relevance filtering, packet bundling) and system architecture (such as QoS and protocols).

Aspen, the picturesque mountain town in Colorado, is known for two processes, or “verbs,” relating to heritage and virtuality. One is to “moviemap,” the process of rigorously filming path and turn sequences to simulate interactive travel and to use as a spatial interface for a multimedia database. The other is to “Aspenize,” the process by which a fragile cultural ecosystem is disrupted by tourism and growth. This essay reflects on their significance and describes exemplary work integrating these two seemingly disparate concepts.

Yuanmingyuan was called “Garden of All Gardens” before it was looted and burnt down by the Anglo-French allied forces in 1860. Nowadays there are only stone ruins that used to be parts of ancient buildings. The Digital Yuanmingyuan project is designed to provide visitors with the visualization of virtual reconstructions superimposed upon the natural field of the ruins using a personal AR (Augmented Reality) system. It can not only preserve the current appearance of the ruins, but also exhibit the original exquisite architecture of Yuanmingyuan. The technical difficulties of the system are analyzed, and the design of the system hardware and the tracking algorithm are discussed. A prototype of the proposed system is developed and the initial result of restoring one typical scene in Yuanmingyuan is presented.

How do we perceive objects when what we see and what we touch is not at the same place? In a virtual environment, we observed that spatial delocation promotes visual dominance when judging the rotation angle of a hand-operated handle. Thus, the delocation of perceptual information appears to increase considerably the weight of the dominant sense at the expense of the other. We relate this result to the design of teleoperation and virtual reality systems, in which, typically, the visual and haptic sensory information originates in spatially distinct devices.

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.