Virtual and Mixed Reality research is a widely interdisciplinary field that allows researchers to create controlled and replicable experiences that would otherwise be difficult to create in a physical lab environment. Other research has shown that the physical orderliness and the type of items present may be important determinants of how people perform in a physical space. The purpose of this present research was to investigate the degree to which orderliness within physical and virtual environments may impact cognitive performance. Further, whether this relationship has differential outcomes based on gender. We conducted two experiments, including a mixed-design experiment where participants entered one of two physical laboratory spaces (clean or technology-filled) and completed a cognitive task in three virtual environments: a MR environment, a virtual clean environment, and a virtual technology-filled environment. Participant performance is significantly better in a clean environment compared to a cluttered environment. Additional results suggest that female participants outperformed male participants in cognitive performance particularly when they did not perceive the task to be mentally taxing or difficult. Additionally, overall participants were more accurate when physical and virtual space were the same compared to different. Additional results suggest that gender differences may exist with implications for transitional virtual environments.

Researchers frequently collect position and orientation data from tracking hardware during virtual reality research studies. These data capture important information about participants' movements during experiments, but often result in large and complex datasets that can be challenging to analyze and interpret. We explore the potential of standard statistical measures that could be used to interpret position and orientation tracking data, and discuss advantages and uses of each measure. We further present three new measurement techniques - 95% range, time spent at mode, and coefficient of determination. We then evaluate the effectiveness of each statistical measure to detect differences in position and orientation on two existing data sets. We find that all of the tested measures are effective in discerning known main effects in position and orientation with varying degrees of sensitivity. This work is intended to guide researchers on future analysis and interpretation of motion tracking data sets.

Body-swap illusions investigating the Proteus effect have often investigated major identity changes such as gender, race, or age. However, the impact of an avatar’s clothing on the Proteus effect is often overlooked. In this work, we investigate if simple avatar clothing-swaps combined with a minor environment change to match the clothing are able to induce a Proteus effect. Specifically, we investigate the impact of a woman avatar wearing business or science attire during a stereotype threatening situation. Our results support that clothing-swaps can induce a Proteus effect. Participants in a successful woman business avatar experienced gender stereotype threat while participants in a successful woman science avatar were instead buffered from gender stereotype threat. Further, subjective embodiment was a significant predictor of response measures such that participants with higher subjective embodiment scores had better cognitive performance. This work demonstrates the potential of the Proteus effect to promote and support traditionally marginalized groups.

Subjective measures, such as the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ), Fast Motion Sickness Questionnaire (FMS), and discomfort scores, are widely used to assess cybersickness, but they often interrupt the user experience and are prone to bias. To overcome these limitations, researchers have also investigated objective indicators, though some approaches, such as using physiological data, can be cumbersome and impractical. Based on the loss of complexity hypothesis, which suggests that certain conditions, such as disease or aging, can produce a reduction of complexity in physiological system dynamics, we conducted an initial investigation of the relationship between movement complexity and cybersickness. We analyzed motion tracking collected from two previous cybersickness studies using the d95 score, a complexity metric derived using principal component analysis. The results revealed a systematic relationship between movement complexity and cybersickness across both experiments. Higher discomfort scores were associated with a reduction in complexity, thereby supporting the loss of complexity hypothesis. Furthermore, the 9-DOF complexity measure, which includes both physical head movement and virtual camera motion, was a more sensitive indicator than the 6-DOF measure computed from physical movements alone. These initial findings suggest that movement complexity may be a useful objective indicator for future cybersickness research.

The study of self-avatars in virtual and augmented reality research continues to be an important research area. These virtual self-avatars have been shown to improve user performance and to modify people’s behaviors through the Proteus effect. However, performance and behavior changes are impacted by how embodied one is in their self-avatar such that higher avatar embodiment improves performance and induces greater behavior changes. It has become increasingly important to be able to measure how embodied one is within their self-avatar to better investigate and understand the impact of avatar embodiment on users. Multiple questionnaires have been proposed and have demonstrated their validity. However no questionnaire has demonstrated reliability—the degree of agreement between repeated uses of the same measurement instrument over time. The reliability of a questionnaire is essential for within-participant studies where a single user’s embodiment level is assessed multiple times. In this paper we assess the reliability of the Avatar Embodiment Questionnaire (AEQ) proposed by Peck and Gonzalez-Franco with an undergraduate population (n=58) through 2-5 repeated exposures, each approximately two-weeks apart. Participants wore same or cross-gendered avatars for the duration of the experiment. The questionnaire results were assessed using three common reliability analyses. For participants in same-gendered avatars, the AEQ demonstrated acceptable or better reliability across all trials. For participants in cross-gendered avatars, the AEQ demonstrated questionable reliability for the initial trial and acceptable to excellent reliability for all other trials. Results support that the AEQ is a reliable measurement tool for assessing virtual embodiment. However, to produce reliable results, minor changes to experimental design should be considered when including avatars that are diversely different from the user.

In this special issue of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), we are pleased to present the top papers from the 32nd IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR 2025), held March 8–12, 2025, in Saint-Malo, France.

"Correlation does not imply causation" is a famous mantra in statistical and visual analysis. However, consumers of visualizations often draw causal conclusions when only correlations between variables are shown. In this paper, we investigate factors that contribute to causal relationships users perceive in visualizations. We collected a corpus of concept pairs from variables in widely used datasets and created visualizations that depict varying correlative associations using three typical statistical chart types. We conducted two MTurk studies on (1) preconceived notions on causal relations without charts, and (2) perceived causal relations with charts, for each concept pair. Our results indicate that people make assumptions about causal relationships between pairs of concepts even without seeing any visualized data. Moreover, our results suggest that these assumptions constitute causal priors that, in combination with visualized association, impact how data visualizations are interpreted. The results also suggest that causal priors may lead to over- or under-estimation in perceived causal relations in different circumstances, and that those priors can also impact users' confidence in their causal assessments. In addition, our results align with prior work, indicating that chart type may also affect causal inference. Using data from the studies, we develop a model to capture the interaction between causal priors and visualized associations as they combine to impact a user's perceived causal relations. In addition to reporting the study results and analyses, we provide an open dataset of causal priors for 56 specific concept pairs that can serve as a potential benchmark for future studies. We also suggest remaining challenges and heuristic-based guidelines to help designers improve visualization design choices to better support visual causal inference.

We are pleased to present the proceedings of the 31st IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR 2024), held March 16–21, 2024, in Orlando, Florida, US, in on-site format. These proceedings contain 101 of the 180 IEEE VR 2024 papers, with the other 79 papers being published in the IEEE VR 2024 special issue of the Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. IEEE VR 2024 had 627 submissions for an acceptance rate of 101/627=16.1% as conference papers, or 180/627=28.7% when including the journal papers.

In this special issue ofIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics(TVCG), we are pleased to present the top papers from the 31th IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR 2024), held March 16-21, 2024, in Orlando, Florida, US.

A user's personal experiences and characteristics may impact the strength of an embodiment illusion and affect resulting behavioral changes in unknown ways. This paper presents a novel re-analysis of two fully-immersive embodiment user-studies (n = 189 and n = 99) using structural equation modeling, to test the effects of personal characteristics on subjective embodiment. Results demonstrate that individual characteristics (gender, participation in science, technology, engineering or math - Experiment 1, age, video gaming experience - Experiment 2) predicted differing self-reported experiences of embodiment Results also indicate that increased self-reported embodiment predicts environmental response, in this case faster and more accurate responses within the virtual environment. Importantly, head-tracking data is shown to be an effective objective measure for predicting embodiment, without requiring researchers to utilize additional equipment.

Control over an avatar in virtual reality can improve one's perceived sense of agency and embodiment towards their avatar. Yet, the relationship between control on agency and embodiment remains unclear. This work aims to investigate two main ideas: (1) the effectiveness of currently used metrics in measuring agency and embodiment and (2) the relationship between different levels of control on agency, embodiment, and cognitive performance. To do this, we conducted a between-participants user study with three conditions on agency ($\mathrm{n}=57$). Participants embodied an avatar with one of three types of control (i.e., Low - control over head only, Medium - control over head and torso, or High - control over head, torso, and arms) and completed a Stroop test. Our results indicate that the degree of control afforded to participants impacted their embodiment and cognitive performance but, as expected, could not be detected in the self-reported agency scores. Furthermore, our results elucidated further insights into the relationship between control and embodiment, suggesting potential uncanny valley-like effects. Future work should aim to refine agency measures to better capture the effect of differing levels of control and consider other methodologies to measure agency.

Current optical see-through displays in the field of augmented reality are limited in their ability to display colors with low lightness in the hue, saturation, lightness (HSL) color space, causing such colors to appear transparent. This hardware limitation may add unintended bias into scenarios with virtual humans. Humans have varying skin tones including HSL colors with low lightness. When virtual humans are displayed with optical see-through devices, people with low lightness skin tones may be displayed semi-transparently while those with high lightness skin tones will be displayed more opaquely. For example, a Black avatar may appear semi-transparent in the same scene as a White avatar who will appear more opaque. We present an exploratory user study ( N=160) investigating whether differing opacity levels result in dehumanizing avatar and human faces. Results support that dehumanization occurs as opacity decreases. This suggests that in similar lighting, low lightness skin tones (e.g., Black faces) will be viewed as less human than high lightness skin tones (e.g., White faces). Additionally, the perceived emotionality of virtual human faces also predicts perceived humanness. Angry faces were seen overall as less human, and at lower opacity levels happy faces were seen as more human. Our results suggest that additional research is needed to understand the effects and interactions of emotionality and opacity on dehumanization. Further, we provide evidence that unintentional racial bias may be added when developing for optical see-through devices using virtual humans. We highlight the potential bias and discuss implications and directions for future research.

We developed a haptically-enhanced physics simulation to investigate the effects of haptics on the understanding of conceptual concepts related to forces—specifically those related to buoyancy. We evaluated the effects of haptic force feedback, as well as traditional visual representations of forces, on learning via a between-participant user study. Participants completed a buoyancy assessment before and after interacting with the simulation. Haptics enhanced performance regardless of prior knowledge. However, the combined effect of haptics with visual cues differed based on participant prior knowledge. Participants with high prior knowledge significantly improved performance when given both abstract visual cues and haptic feedback combined. Participants with low prior knowledge significantly improved when given haptic feedback alone, and the combination of haptics with visual cues did not improve performance. Our results suggest that the prior knowledge of users and the visual cues used impact the effectiveness of haptically-enhanced simulations with respect to learning outcomes.

Shooter bias is the tendency to more quickly shoot at unarmed Black suspects compared to unarmed White suspects. The primary goal of this research was to investigate the efficacy of shooter bias simulation studies in a more realistic immersive virtual scenario instead of the traditional methodologies using desktop computers. In this paper we present results from a user study (N=99) investigating shooter and racial bias in an immersive virtual environment. Our results highlight how racial bias was observed differently in an immersive virtual environment compared to previous desktop-based simulation studies. Latency to shoot, the standard shooter bias measure, was not found to be significantly different between race or socioeconomic status in our more realistic scenarios where participants chose to raise a weapon and pull a trigger. However, more nuanced head and hand motion analysis was able to predict participants' racial shooting accuracy and implicit racism scores. Discussion of how these nuanced measures can be used for detecting behavior changes for body-swap illusions, and implications of this work related to racial justice and police brutality are discussed.

A psychological phenomenon termed "stereotype threat" has been shown to contribute to women's underperformance and underrepresentation in math and science fields. Within the virtual reality literature, a recent study utilized gendered body-swap illusions (i.e., women in male virtual bodies) to mitigate the effects of stereotype threat among a sample of female participants. The present research provides a much needed replication of this intervention, as well as a critical extension of virtual reality research on the Proteus Effect to test whether stereotype threat can be induced among male participants immersed in a female virtual body. Results supported both the replication and extension hypotheses; female participants embodied in male avatars were buffered from stereotype threat whereas male participants embodied in female avatars suffered from stereotype threat. Avatar gender also influenced participants' math confidence and awareness of the negative societal stereotype regarding women's math ability.

A common goal of human-subject experiments in virtual reality (VR) research is evaluating VR hardware and software for use by the general public. A core principle of human-subject research is that the sample included in a given study should be representative of the target population; otherwise, the conclusions drawn from the findings may be biased and may not generalize to the population of interest. In order to assess whether characteristics of participants in VR research are representative of the general public, we investigated participant demographic characteristics from human-subject experiments in the Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality Conferences from 2015-2019. We also assessed the representation of female authors. In the 325 eligible manuscripts, which presented results from 365 human-subject experiments, we found evidence of significant underrepresentation of women as both participants and authors. To investigate whether this underrepresentation may bias researchers' findings, we then conducted a meta-analysis and meta-regression to assess whether demographic characteristics of study participants were associated with a common outcome evaluated in VR research: the change in simulator sickness following head-mounted display VR exposure. As expected, participants in VR studies using HMDs experienced small but significant increases in simulator sickness. However, across the included studies, the change in simulator sickness was systematically associated with the proportion of female participants. We discuss the negative implications of conducting experiments on non-representative samples and provide methodological recommendations for mitigating bias in future VR research.

Understanding the effects of hand proximity to objects and tasks is critical for hand-held and near-hand objects. Even though self-avatars have been shown to be beneficial for various tasks in virtual environments, little research has investigated the effect of avatar hand proximity on working memory. This paper presents a between-participants user study investigating the effects of self-avatars and physical hand proximity on a common working memory task, the Stroop interference task. Results show that participants felt embodied when a self-avatar was in the scene, and that the subjective level of embodiment decreased when a participant's hands were not collocated with the avatar's hands. Furthermore, a participant's physical hand placement was significantly related to Stroop interference: proximal hands produced a significant increase in accuracy compared to non-proximal hands. Surprisingly, Stroop interference was not mediated by the existence of a self-avatar or level of embodiment.

Redirected Walking (RDW) steering algorithms have traditionally relied on human-engineered logic. However, recent advances in reinforcement learning (RL) have produced systems that surpass human performance on a variety of control tasks. This paper investigates the potential of using RL to develop a novel reactive steering algorithm for RDW. Our approach uses RL to train a deep neural network that directly prescribes the rotation, translation, and curvature gains to transform a virtual environment given a user's position and orientation in the tracked space. We compare our learned algorithm to steer-to-center using simulated and real paths. We found that our algorithm outperforms steer-to-center on simulated paths, and found no significant difference on distance traveled on real paths. We demonstrate that when modeled as a continuous control problem, RDW is a suitable domain for RL, and moving forward, our general framework provides a promising path towards an optimal RDW steering algorithm.

This poster details an ongoing experiment aiming to test the prevalence of shooter bias in virtual reality. Further, we examine the interaction between shooter bias and perceived socioeconomic status. Even though shooter bias is a well-documented topic in psychology research, little experimentation has used virtual reality, instead opting for unrealistic two-dimensional simulations. This study will yield new insight into shooter bias, especially concerning virtual reality as a tool for use in future work, and will provide new understanding about the relationship between socioeconomic status and shooter bias.

The use of real-like hands in virtual reality simulators is common; however, research into understanding how the human brain perceives hands in virtual environments is limited. Self avatars are a great way to improve the users presence and perception of space [6], but the precise implementation of avatars is arduous, and including only hands is an attractive alternative. Earlier psychology research reported that the closer the hands to the studied object, the lower the working memory load. We hypothesized that in virtual environments, virtual hands that are collocated with the users hands should improve the users working memory load, and we tested our hypothesis with a between-participant study (n=30) measuring working memory load with the Stroop Interference Task.

Redirected walking techniques enable users to naturally locomote in virtual environments (VEs) that are larger than the tracked space. Redirected walking imperceptibly transforms the VE around the user with predefined estimated threshold gains. Previously estimated gains were evaluated with a 40° field of view (FOV). We conducted a within-participant user study to estimate and compare thresholds for rotation gains. Significant differences in detection thresholds were found between FOVs. When using a 110° FOV, rotations can be decreased 31% and increased 49% compared to decreased 18% and increased 47% with a 40° FOV. Significant differences were found between female and male gains with a 110° FOV.

Redirected walking techniques enable users to naturally locomote in virtual environments (VEs) that are larger than the tracked space. Redirected walking imperceptibly transforms the VE around the user with predefined estimated threshold gains. Previously estimated gains were evaluated with a 40° field of view (FOV), and have not been evaluated in the presence of a distractor-a moving object in the VE that may capture the user's attention. We conducted a 2 (FOV: 40°, 110°) × 2 (Gender: female, male) × 2 (Distractor: without, with) user study to estimate and compare thresholds for rotation gains. Significant differences in detection thresholds were found between FOVs, and significant differences were found between female and male gains with a 110° FOV. Males had significantly wider gains using a 110° FOV compared to a 40° FOV, and distractors affected females differently than males. Finally, strong correlations were found between simulator sickness scores and threshold gains.

Disability Simulation (DS) is an approach used to modify attitudes regarding people with disabilities. DS places people without disabilities in situations that are designed for the users to experience a disability. In this research we investigate reverse disability simulation (RDS) in a virtual reality environment. In a RDS people with disabilities perform tasks that are made easier in the virtual environment compared to the real world. We hypothesized that putting people with disabilities in a RDS will increase confidence and enable efficient task completion. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted a within-subjects experiment in which participants performed a virtual “kicking a ball” task in two different conditions: a normal condition without RDS (i.e., same difficulty as in the real world) and an easy condition with RDS (i.e., physically easier than the real world but visually the same). The results from our study suggest that RDS increased participants' confidence.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a concept called virtual ability simulation (VAS) for people with disability in a virtual reality (VR) environment. In a VAS people with disabilities perform tasks that are made easier in the virtual environment (VE) compared to the real world. We hypothesized that putting people with disabilities in a VAS will increase confidence and enable more efficient task completion than without a VAS. To investigate this hypothesis, we conducted a within-subjects experiment in which participants performed a virtual task called "kick the ball" in two different conditions: a no gain condition (i.e., same difficulty as in the real world) and a rotational gain condition (i.e., physically easier than the real world but visually the same). The results from our study suggest that VAS increased participants' confidence which in turn enables them to perceive the difficulty of the same task easier.

The underrepresentation of women in technical and STEM fields is a well-known problem, and stereotype threatening situations have been linked to the inability to recruit and retain women into these fields. Virtual reality enables the unique ability to perform body-swap illusions, and research has shown that these illusions can change participant behavior. Characteristically people take on the traits of the avatar they are embodying. We hypothesized that female participants embodying male avatars when a stereotype threat was made salient would demonstrate stereotype lift. We tested our hypothesis through a between-participants user study in an immersive virtual environment by measuring working memory. Our results support that stereotype threat can be induced in an immersive virtual environment, and that stereotype lift is possible with fully-immersive body-swap illusions. Additionally, our results suggest that participants in a gender-swapped avatar without an induced stereotype threat have significantly impaired working memory; however, this impairment is lifted when a threat is made salient. We discuss possible theories as to why a body-swap illusion from a female participant into a male avatar would only increase working memory impairment when not under threat, as well as applications and future research directions. Our results offer additional insight into understanding the cognitive effects of body-swap illusions, and provide evidence that virtual reality may be an applicable tool for decreasing the gender gap in technology.

We present a novel technique for animating self-avatar eye movements in an immersive virtual environment without the use of eye-tracking hardware, and evaluate our technique via a two-alternative, forced-choice-with-confidence experiment that compares this simulated-eye-tracking condition to a no-eye-tracking condition and a real-eye-tracking condition in which the avatar's eyes were rotated with an eye tracker. Viewing the reflection of a tracked self-avatar is often used in virtual-embodiment scenarios to induce in the participant the illusion that the virtual body of the self-avatar belongs to them, however current tracking methods do not account for the movements of the participants eyes, potentially lessening this body-ownership illusion. The results of our experiment indicate that, although blind to the experimental conditions, participants noticed differences between eye behaviors, and found that the real and simulated conditions represented their behavior better than the no-eye-tracking condition. Additionally, no statistical difference was found when choosing between the real and simulated conditions. These results suggest that adding eye movements to self-avatars produces a subjective increase in self-identification with the avatar due to a more complete representation of the participant's behavior, which may be beneficial for inducing virtual embodiment, and that effective results can be obtained without the need for any specialized eye-tracking hardware.

Redirected Free Exploration with Distractors (RFEDs) is a large-scale real-walking locomotion interface developed to enable people to walk freely in Virtual Environments (VEs) that are larger than the tracked space in their facility. This paper describes the RFED system in detail and reports on a user study that evaluated RFED by comparing it to Walking-in-Place (WIP) and Joystick (JS) interfaces. The RFED system is composed of two major components, redirection and distractors. This paper discusses design challenges, implementation details, and lessons learned during the development of two working RFED systems. The evaluation study examined the effect of the locomotion interface on users' cognitive performance on navigation and wayfinding measures. The results suggest that participants using RFED were significantly better at navigating and wayfinding through virtual mazes than participants using walking-in-place and joystick interfaces. Participants traveled shorter distances, made fewer wrong turns, pointed to hidden targets more accurately and more quickly, and were able to place and label targets on maps more accurately, and more accurately estimate the virtual environment size.

We report on a user study evaluating Redirected Free Exploration with Distractors (RFED), a large-scale, real-walking, locomotion interface, by comparing it to Walking-in-Place (WIP) and Joystick (JS), two common locomotion interfaces. The between-subjects study compared navigation ability in RFED, WIP, and JS interfaces in VEs that are more than two times the dimensions of the tracked space. The interfaces were evaluated based on navigation and wayfinding metrics and results suggest that participants using RFED were significantly better at navigating and wayfinding through virtual mazes than participants using walking-in-place and joystick interfaces. Participants traveled shorter distances, made fewer wrong turns, pointed to hidden targets more accurately and more quickly, and were able to place and label targets on maps more accurately. Moreover, RFED participants were able to more accurately estimate VE size.

Users in virtual environments often find navigation more difficult than in the real world. Our new locomotion interface, Improved Redirection with Distractors (IRD), enables users to walk in larger-than-tracked space VEs without predefined waypoints. We compared IRD to the current best interface, really walking, by conducting a user study measuring navigational ability. Our results show that IRD users can really walk through VEs that are larger than the tracked space and can point to targets and complete maps of VEs no worse than when really walking.

Virtual Environments (VEs) that use a real-walking locomotion interface have typically been restricted in size to the area of the tracked lab space. Techniques proposed to lift this size constraint, enabling real walking in VEs that are larger than the tracked lab space, all require reorientation techniques (ROTs) in the worst-case situation-when a user is close to walking out of the tracked space. We propose a new ROT using visual and audial distractors-objects in the VE that the user focuses on while the VE rotates-and compare our method to current ROTs through three user studies. ROTs using distractors were preferred and ranked more natural by users. Our findings also suggest that improving visual realism and adding sound increased a user's feeling of presence. Users were also less aware of the rotating VE when ROTs with distractors were used. Our findings also suggest that improving visual realism and adding sound increased a user's feeling of presence.

Virtual environments (VEs) that use a real-walking locomotion interface have typically been restricted in size to the area of the tracked lab space. Techniques proposed to lift this size constraint, enabling real walking in VEs that are larger than the tracked lab space, all require reorientation techniques (ROTs) in the worst-case situation–when a user is close to walking out of the tracked space. We propose a new ROT using distractors–objects in the VE for the user to focus on while the VE rotates –and compare our method to current ROTs through two user studies. Our findings show ROTs using distractors were preferred and ranked more natural by users. Users were also less aware of the rotating VE, when ROTs with distractors were used.