This study investigates how interaction methods and spatial distance affect user performance and experience in virtual reality (VR) tasks. We compared the Go-Go technique with ray-based Laser selection across eight target distances (0.67× to 4× arm length) in a memory task to identify distance ranges that minimize motor and cognitive demands and support working memory. Results with 41 participants revealed a trade-off: Go-Go enhanced embodiment, while Laser yielded higher efficiency and lower workload. This trade-off was distance-dependent: Go-Go performed best at 1.2×-1.4×, and Laser at 1.4×-2.2×. Our results offer practical design guidelines for adaptive, distance-aware VR systems that align performance and subjective experience.

The rise of urbanisation has reduced connection with nature and physical interaction, both crucial for well-being and pro-environmental behavior. Sensing Nature is a multisensory virtual reality installation that aims to energize and nourish the spirit by reimagining the natural world as a playful, immersive experience. Users create a sensory journey by interacting with a haptic tree and exploring real-world fabrics and textures. Each touch triggers a transformation of the virtual tree, blending blooming virtual flowers, nature-inspired spatial sounds, and physical vibrations for a unique immersive experience. This project investigated multisensory interaction in virtual reality’ s impacts on people's feelings and attitude to nature, addressing the lack of direct touch-based haptic interactions in VR by incorporating active and passive haptic feedback. Qualitative studies shown that multisensory interactions in virtual reality induce healing effects, relaxation and shift attitudes towards nature, demonstrating sensing nature's potential application for relaxation and pro- environmental attitudes.

We explored how a Large Language model-powered multilingual virtual agent can reduce foreign language anxiety (FLA) in a VRbased icebreaker scenario.Our agent supports hybrid language interaction-accepting input in either English or the user's native language, while responding in English.Ten participants interacted with the agent using both language modes.Quantitative results showed reduced subjective FLA after the English session, compared to their real-world experience, and increased external focus when using their native language (vs English).Qualitative findings suggested that participants experienced greater anxiety in understanding compared to speech production, while language switching also imposed additional cognitive costs.

We conducted a within-subjects study to examine how realistic faces and cartoon faces on avatars affect communication, task satisfaction, sense of presence, and mood perception in mixed reality meetings. Over the course of two weeks, six groups of co-workers (14 people) held recurring meetings using Microsoft HoloLens2 devices, each person embodying a personal full-body avatar with either a realistic face or cartoon face. Half of the groups started with the realistic face avatar and switched to the cartoon face version halfway through (RC condition), and the other half with the cartoon-face avatar first (CR condition). Results showed that participants in the RC condition may have had higher expectations and more errors in perceiving their colleagues’ moods. Participants in the CR condition reported that the avatars’ appearance mattered less over time and experienced increased comfort and improved identification of their colleagues. Participants rated words, tone of voice, and movement as the most useful cues for perceiving colleagues’ moods, regardless of avatar rendering style. In the RC condition, participants rated gaze as more useful than facial expressions, while in the CR condition, both gaze and facial expressions were rated as the least useful. Results also suggested that participants had more errors when perceiving negative moods in their colleagues, with this trend appearing for most moods, but depending on conditions. Implications of these findings for mixed and virtual reality meetings are discussed. This work contributes to the field of remote collaboration by providing insights from longitudinal data on the impact of avatar appearance on various aspects of work meetings in virtual environments. • Realistic avatars may lead to higher expectations and errors in perceiving moods. • Cartoon avatars may increase the comfort and identification of colleagues over time. • For both avatars, words, voice, and movement were the most useful to perceive moods. • Avatar’s evaluation should be longitudinal as attitudes towards them change over time. • Avatar attitudes depend on context; evaluation should prioritise ecological validity. • Avatars’ identification, communication, and emotional trust may outweigh appearance.

Avatars are edging into mainstream videoconferencing, but evaluation of how avatar animation modalities contribute to work meeting outcomes has been limited. We report a within-group videoconferencing experiment in which 68 employees of a global technology company, in 16 groups, used the same stylized avatars in three modalities (static picture, audio-animation, and webcam-animation) to complete collaborative decision-making tasks. Quantitatively, for meeting outcomes, webcam-animated avatars improved meeting effectiveness over the picture modality and were also reported to be more comfortable and inclusive than both other modalities. In terms of avatar satisfaction, there was a similar preference for webcam animation as compared to both other modalities. Our qualitative analysis shows participants expressing a preference for the holistic motion of webcam animation, and that meaningful movement outweighs realism for meeting outcomes, as evidenced through a systematic overview of ten thematic factors. We discuss implications for research and commercial deployment and conclude that webcam-animated avatars are a plausible alternative to video in work meetings.

Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) is highly prevalent among musicians and often debilitating, associated with changes in cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physiological responses to performance situations. Efforts have been made to create simulated performance environments in conservatoires and Virtual Reality (VR) to assess their effectiveness in managing MPA. Despite these advances, results have been mixed, underscoring the need for controlled experimental designs and joint analyses of performance, physiology, and subjective ratings in these settings. Furthermore, the broader application of simulated performance environments for at-home use and laboratory studies on MPA remains limited. We designed VR scenarios to induce MPA in pianists and embedded them within a controlled within-subject experimental design to systematically assess their effects on performance, physiology, and anxiety ratings. Twenty pianists completed a performance task under two conditions: a public 'Audition' and a private 'Studio' rehearsal. Participants experienced VR pre-performance settings before transitioning to live piano performances in the real world. We measured subjective anxiety, performance (MIDI data), and heart rate variability (HRV). Compared to the Studio condition, pianists in the Audition condition reported higher somatic anxiety ratings and demonstrated an increase in performance accuracy over time, with a reduced error rate. Additionally, their performances were faster and featured increased note intensity. No concurrent changes in HRV were observed. These results validate the potential of VR to induce MPA, enhancing pitch accuracy and invigorating tempo and dynamics. We discuss the strengths and limitations of this approach to develop VR-based interventions to mitigate the debilitating effects of MPA.

Stigma towards individuals with schizophrenia reduces quality of life, creating a barrier to accessing education and employment opportunities. Schizophrenia is one of the most stigmatized mental health conditions, and stigma is prevalent particularly among healthcare professionals. In this study, we investigated whether Virtual Reality (VR) can be incorporated into interventions to reduce stigma. In particular, we compared the effectiveness of three VR conditions based on intergroup contact theory in reducing stigma in form of implicit and explicit attitudes, and behavioral intentions. Through an immersive virtual consultation in a clinical setting, participants (N=60) experienced one of three different conditions: the Doctor's perspective (embodiment in a majority group member during contact), the Patient's perspective (embodiment in a minority group member) and a Third-person perspective (vicarious contact). Results demonstrated an increase of stigma on certain explicit measures (perceived recovery and social restriction) but also an increase of empathy (perspective-taking, empathic concern) across all conditions regardless of perspective. More importantly, participants' viewpoint influenced the desire for social distance differently depending on the perspective: the Third-person observation significantly increased the desire for social distance, Doctor embodiment marginally decreased it, while Patient embodiment showed no significant change. No change was found in the Implicit Association Test. These findings suggest that VR intergroup contact can effectively reduce certain dimensions of stigma toward schizophrenia, but the type of perspective experienced significantly impacts outcomes.

Until recently, Virtual Reality (VR) applications relied on controllers to enable user interaction in virtual environments. With advances in tracking technology, HMDs are now able to track the movements of users’ hands in real-time with significantly greater accuracy, allowing us to interact with the digital world directly with our hands. However, it is not entirely clear how hand tracking affects users’ performance. In this study, we investigate user performance using an in-game analytics-based assessment methodology for a VR memory puzzle task. We conducted a within-subjects experiment with 30 participants in three conditions: 1- Hand-tracking, 2-Controller Without Haptics, and 3- Controller With Haptics. In all our measurements (correct order and pattern, correct pattern only, and trial completion) except for the initial selection time, participants performed best with hand tracking. The use of controllers with haptics did not outperform controllers without haptics in most measures, possibly because other feedback cues compensated for the lack of haptics. This study helps us better understand the three selected interactivity methods when used in VR, as well as the importance of naturalistic experience in interaction design.

People can understand how human interaction unfolds and can pinpoint social attitudes such as showing interest or social engagement with a conversational partner. However, summarising this with a set of rules is difficult, as our judgement is sometimes subtle and subconscious. Hence, it is challenging to program agents or non-player characters (NPCs) to react towards social signals appropriately, which is important for immersive narrative games in Virtual Reality (VR). We present a collaborative work between two game studios (Maze Theory and Dream Reality Interactive) and academia to develop an immersive machine learning (ML) pipeline for detecting social engagement. Here we introduce the motivation and the methodology of the immersive ML pipeline, then we cover the motivation for the industry-academia collaboration, how it progressed, the implications of joined work on the industry and reflective insights on the collaboration. Overall, we highlight the industry-academia collaborative work on an immersive ML pipeline for detecting social engagement. We demonstrate how creatives could use ML and VR to expand their ability to design more engaging commercial games.

Owning a virtual body inside Virtual Reality (VR) offers a unique experience where, typically, users are able to control their self-avatar’s body via tracked VR controllers. However, controlling a self-avatar’s facial movements is harder due to the HMD being in the way for tracking. In this work we present (1) the technical pipeline of creating and rigging self-alike avatars, whose facial expressions can be then controlled by users wearing the VIVE Pro Eye and VIVE Facial Tracker, and (2) based on this setting, two within-group studies on the psychological impact of the appearance realism of self-avatars, both the level of photorealism and self-likeness. Participants were told to practise their presentation, in front of a mirror, in the body of a realistic looking avatar and a cartoon like one, both animated with body and facial mocap data. In study 1 we made two bespoke self-alike avatars for each participant and we found that although participants found the cartoon-like character more attractive, they reported higher Body Ownership with whichever the avatar they had in the first trial. In study 2 we used generic avatars with higher fidelity facial animation, and found a similar "first trial effect" where they reported the avatar from their first trial being less creepy. Our results also suggested participants found the facial expressions easier to control with the cartoon-like character. Further, our eye-tracking data suggested that although participants were mainly facing their avatar during their presentation, their eye-gaze were focused elsewhere half of the time.

In the current consumer market, Virtual reality experiences are predominantly generated through visual and auditory feedback. Haptics are not yet well established, but are increasingly introduced to enhance the user’s sense of ‘reality’. With haptic (vibrotactile) feedback now part of the built-in mechanism of VR consumer devices, there is an urgent need to understand how different modalities work together to improve the user experience. This paper reports an experiment that explores the contributions made to participants’ sense of presence by haptic and visual feedback in a virtual environment. Participants experienced a virtual ball bouncing on a virtual stick resting across their avatar hands. We found that presence was enhanced when they could both see and feel the ball’s action; with a strong suggestion that haptic feedback alone gave rise to a greater sense of presence than visual alone. Similarly, whilst visual or bimodal feedback enhanced participants’ ability to locate where the ball bounced on the stick, our results suggest that the action itself was more readily discerned haptically than visually.

Nonverbal cues have multiple roles in social encounters, with gaze behaviour facilitating interactions and conversational flow. In this work, we explore the conversation dynamics in dyadic settings in a free-flow discussion. Using automatic analysis (rather than manual labelling), we investigate how the gaze behaviour of one person is related to how much the other person changes their gaze (frequency in gaze change) and what their gaze target is (direct or avert gaze). Our results show that when one person is looked at they change their gaze direction with a higher frequency compared to when they are not looked at. They also tend to maintain a direct gaze to the other person when they are not looked at.

We are interested the effect of lip and arm synchronization on body ownership in VR (the illusion that the users own a virtual body). Participants were invited to give a presentation in an HMD, while seeing in a virtual mirror a gender-matched avatar who copied their arm and lip movements in sync and a-sync conditions. We measure participants' reaction with questionnaires administrated verbally after their presentation while immersed in VR. The result suggested an interaction effect of arm and lip, showing reports of higher level of embodiment with the congruent as compared to the incongruent conditions. Further study is needed to confirm if the same interaction effect can be captured with objective measurements.

Abstract This study examines attributes of virtual human behavior that may increase the plausibility of a simulated crowd and affect the user's experience in Virtual Reality. Purpose‐developed experiments in both Immersive and semi‐Immersive Virtual Reality systems queried the impact of collision and basic interaction between real‐users and the virtual crowd and their effect on the apparent realism and ease of navigation within Virtual Reality (VR). Participants' behavior and subjective measurements indicated that facilitating collision avoidance between the user and the virtual crowd makes the virtual characters, the environment, and the whole Virtual Reality system appear more realistic and lifelike. Adding basic social interaction, such as verbal salutations, gaze, and other gestures by the virtual characters towards the user, further contributes to this effect, with the participants reporting a stronger sense of presence. On the other hand, enabling collision avoidance on its own produces a reduced feeling of comfort and ease of navigation in VR. Objective measurements showed another interesting finding that collision avoidance may reduce the user's performance regarding their primary goal (navigating in VR following someone) and that this performance is further reduced when both collision avoidance and social interaction are facilitated.

In recent years, the use of Virtual Characters in experimental studies has opened new research avenues in social neuroscience. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and preliminary results of two case studies exploring different types of social cognition using interactive Virtual Characters animated with motion captured data.

Is it their movements or appearance that helps us to identify a child as a child? In this work we created four video clips with a Virtual Character walking, but with different combinations of either child or adult animation applied on either a child or adult body. An experimental study was conducted with 53 participants who viewed all four videos in random orders. The results show that participants could easily identify the consistent video clips (child animation with child body, and adult animation with adult body). With the inconsistent video clips, both animation and body shape had an effect on participants' judgments. They also reported higher level of empathy, care, and feeling of protection towards the child character as compared to the adult character. Finally, compared to appearance, animation seems to be playing a bigger role in invoking participants' emotional responses.

In this paper we compare participants' behavior and experience when navigating through a virtual environment populated with virtual agents in an IVR (Immersive Virtual Reality) system and a semi-IVR system. We measured the impact of collision and basic interaction between participants and virtual agents in both systems. Our findings show that it is more important for our semi-IVR systems to facilitate collision avoidance between the user and the virtual agents accompanied with basic interaction between them. This can increase the sense of presence and make the virtual agents and the environment appear more realistic and lifelike.

Abstract Humans use their bodies in a highly expressive way during conversation, and animated characters that lack this form of non‐verbal expression can seem stiff and unemotional. An important aspect of non‐verbal expression is that people respond to each other's behavior and are highly attuned to picking up this type of response. This is particularly important for the feedback given while listening to some one speak. However, automatically generating this type of behavior is difficult as it is highly complex and subtle. This paper takes a data driven approach to generating interactive social behavior. Listening behavior is motion captured, together with the audio being listened to. These data are used to learn an animation model of the responses of one person to the other. This allows us to create characters that respond in real‐time during a conversation with a real human. Copyright ? 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.