Cybersickness, or sickness caused by virtual reality (VR), represents a significant threat to the usability of VR applications. Repeated exposure to the same VR stimulus causes a reduction in cybersickness, referred to as Cybersickness Abatement from Repeated Exposure (CARE). This study examined whether the benefits of CARE generalize across distinct VR contexts, which was operationalized as three distinct games (a climbing game, a puzzle game, and a stealth survival game). Participants played a VR game for up to 20 minutes. Those in the Repeated Exposure condition played one VR game (either a puzzle game or a climbing game) on three separate days followed by a different VR game (a survival game) on the fourth day. Those in the Single Exposure condition played the survival game once. The three games all differed in several ways, including environment and task, whereas the puzzle and survival games shared a similar joystick locomotion interface that differed from the locomotion interface in the climbing game. Results indicate that cybersickness on Day 4 of the Repeated Exposure condition was significantly lower than that in the Single Exposure condition, regardless of which game was experienced on Days 1-3. The practical implication of this finding is that CARE that occurs in one VR context can generalize to a novel context with a distinct environment, task, and locomotion interface. Results are considered in the context of multiple theoretical explanations for CARE, including sensory rearrangement and habituation. These results support systematic exposure as an approach to reducing cybersickness.

Cybersickness, or sickness induced by virtual reality (VR), negatively impacts the enjoyment and adoption of the technology. One method that has been used to reduce sickness is repeated exposure to VR, herein Cybersickness Abatement from Repeated Exposure (CARE). However, high sickness levels during repeated exposure may discourage some users from returning. Field of view (FOV) restriction reduces cybersickness by minimizing visual motion in the periphery, but also negatively affects the user's visual experience. This study explored whether CARE that occurs with FOV restriction generalizes to a full FOV experience. Participants played a VR game for up to 20 minutes. Those in the Repeated Exposure Condition played the same VR game on four separate days, experiencing FOV restriction during the first three days and no FOV restriction on the fourth day. Results indicated significant CARE with FOV restriction (Days 1--3). Further, cybersickness on Day 4, without FOV restriction, was significantly lower than that of participants in the Single Exposure Condition, who experienced the game without FOV restriction only on one day. The current findings show that significant CARE can occur while experiencing minimal cybersickness. Results are considered in the context of multiple theoretical explanations for CARE, including sensory rearrangement, adaptation, habituation, and postural control.

Multiple tools are available to reduce cybersickness (sickness caused by virtual reality), but past research has not investigated the combined effects of multiple mitigation tools. Field of view (FOV) restriction limits peripheral vision during self-motion, and ample evidence supports its effectiveness for reducing cybersickness. Snap turning involves discrete rotations of the user's perspective without presenting intermediate views, although reports on its effectiveness at reducing cybersickness are limited and equivocal. Both mitigation tools reduce the visual motion that can cause cybersickness. The current study (N = 201) investigated the individual and combined effects of FOV restriction and snap turning on cybersickness when playing a consumer virtual reality game. FOV restriction and snap turning in isolation reduced cybersickness compared to a control condition without mitigation tools. Yet, the combination of FOV restriction and snap turning did not further reduce cybersickness beyond the individual tools in isolation, and in some cases the combination of tools led to cybersickness similar to that in the no mitigation control. These results indicate that caution is warranted when combining multiple cybersickness mitigation tools, which can interact in unexpected ways.

Apple's 1987 Knowledge Navigator video contains a vision of a sophisticated digital personal assistant, but the natural human-agent conversational dialog shown does not currently exist. To investigate why, the authors analyzed the video using three theoretical frameworks: the DiCoT framework, the HAT Game Analysis framework, and the Flows of Power framework. These were used to codify the human-agent interactions and classify the agent's capabilities. While some barriers to creating such agents are technological, other barriers arise from privacy, social and situational factors, trust, and the financial business case. The social roles and asymmetric interactions of the human and agent are discussed in the broader context of HAT research, along with the need for a new term for these agents that does not rely on a human social relationship metaphor. This research offers designers of conversational agents a research roadmap to build more highly capable and trusted non-human teammates.

User interface design patterns that document Human-Agent Team (HAT) interface best practices were developed by analyzing team video games with different types of agents, ranging from virtual players in sports games to advisors contributing to strategy and planning in combat games. One factor that may contribute to the enormous success of some games is the cohesive team interactions between humans and agents. A design pattern collection was developed by identifying 25 design patterns under interface themes most relevant to HATs. The design patterns describe how multiple successful game interfaces handle challenging aspects of HAT interaction, addressing contexts including planning, spatial orientation, task management, communication, and more. Based on the complex and well-tested interface solutions in video games, these design patterns can provide HAT user interface developers practical guidance for interface development and a starting point for developing a HAT design pattern language.

As Computer Mediated Communications (CMCs) advance, businesses have sought alternatives to face-to-face (F2F) meetings to increase productivity for geographically dispersed teams while saving time and money. However, critical differences between CMCs and F2F impact multiple aspects of communication performance. In order to investigate these variations, the current research investigated the communication effectiveness in three distinct scenarios: video conferencing (VC), virtual reality (VR), and face-to-face (F2F). The study involved an electrical circuit repair task and the administration of multiple surveys to gather data from a total of 104 participants, focusing on four dependent variables: shared situational awareness, usability, mental workload, and performance confidence. For all the variables, results showed significantly better scores in VR and F2F conditions than in VC, but there was no significant difference between the VR and F2F conditions. These findings can inform technology developers in improving communication performance in computer mediated contexts, especially by using VR.

Communication performance is highly context sensitive and difficult to quantify. In the SCOTTIE project (Systematic Communication Objectives and Telecommunications Technology Investigations and Evaluations), the goal is to investigate the impact of the communication medium on team performance and effectiveness. The human decision to travel or replace travel with telecommunications can be extracted from SCOTTIE, rather than relying on intuition and opinion. This poster analyzes four social communication constructs and compares them in Face-to-Face, Video Conferencing, and Virtual Reality training scenarios. Co-presence, engagement, rapport, and trust were the four constructs. Data from 105 participants across the three between-subject conditions showed that engagement was the only construct that had a statistically significant difference between the three training environments.

This work explores the assessment dimension of persistent feedback to a team, i.e., how presenting feedback based on individual scores vs. team scores vs. both (I&T) affects team performance and team dynamics of a three-person team. Various studies have attempted to determine which level of feedback interdependence (i.e., individual vs. team vs. I&T), presented within a collaborative context, produced optimal team performance. The studies have shown mixed results. Precisely 117 participants (39 three-person Teams) conducted a modified version of the Multiple Errands Test known as the Team Multiple Errands Test (TMET). The teams performed the TMET within a virtual desktop environment. They performed the task in three real-time persistent feedback conditions: Individual, Team, and I&T. Overall, the feedback condition seemed to influence the speed with which team members completed the task. Specifically, the results indicated that individuals in the Team feedback condition moved more quickly through the task than individuals in the I&T feedback condition. There were no significant differences between the Individual condition and the Team or I&T conditions. We suggest that user interface (UI) designers developing persistent feedback for a virtual collaborative training environment should primarily present feedback based on team assessment, as opposed to the I&T assessment, and to be cautious of information overload.

The wide availability of consumer-oriented virtual reality (VR) equipment has enabled researchers to recruit existing VR owners to participate remotely using their own equipment. Yet, there are many differences between lab environments and home environments, as well as differences between participant samples recruited for lab studies and remote studies. This paper replicates a lab-based experiment on VR locomotion interfaces using a remote sample. Participants completed a triangle-completion task (travel two path legs, then point to the path origin) using their own VR equipment in a remote, unsupervised setting. Locomotion was accomplished using two versions of the teleporting interface varying in availability of rotational self-motion cues. The size of the traveled path and the size of the surrounding virtual environment were also manipulated. Results from remote participants largely mirrored lab results, with overall better performance when rotational self-motion cues were available. Some differences also occurred, including a tendency for remote participants to rely less on nearby landmarks, perhaps due to increased competence with using the teleporting interface to update self-location. This replication study provides insight for VR researchers on aspects of lab studies that may or may not replicate remotely.

The number of people who own a virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) has reached a point where researchers can readily recruit HMD owners to participate remotely using their own equipment. However, HMD owners recruited online may differ from the university community members who typically participate in VR research. HMD owners (n=220) and non-owners (n=282) were recruited through two online work sites-Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Prolific-and an undergraduate participant pool. Participants completed a survey in which they provided demographic information and completed measures of HMD use, video game use, spatial ability, and motion sickness susceptibility. In the context of the populations sampled, the results provide 1) a characterization of HMD owners, 2) a snapshot of the most commonly owned HMDs, 3) a comparison between HMD owners and non-owners, and 4) a comparison among online workers and undergraduates. Significant gender differences were found: men reported lower motion sickness susceptibility and more video game hours than women, and men outperformed women on spatial tasks. Men comprised a greater proportion of HMD owners than non-owners, but after accounting for this imbalance, HMD owners did not differ appreciably from non-owners. Comparing across recruitment platform, male undergraduates outperformed male online workers on spatial tests, and female undergraduates played fewer video game hours than female online workers. The data removal rate was higher from Amazon compared to Prolific, possibly reflecting greater dishonesty. These results provide a description of HMD users that can inform researchers recruiting remote participants through online work sites. These results also signal a need for caution when comparing in-person VR research that primarily enrolls undergraduates to online VR research that enrolls online workers.

As the variety of possible interactions with virtual reality (VR) continues to expand, researchers need a way to relate these interactions to users' needs and goals in ways that advance understanding. Existing efforts have focused mainly on the symmetric use of technology, which excludes a rising form of interaction known as asymmetric VR, in which co-located participants use different interfaces to interact with a shared environment. There must be a clear path to creating asymmetric VR systems that are rooted in previous work from several fields, as these systems have use cases in education, hybrid reality teams (using VR and other technologies to interact online and face to face), accessibility, as well as entertainment. Currently, there is no systematic way to characterize 1) how a system may be asymmetric, 2) how the different mediation technology and affordances within asymmetric VR support (or do not support) users' goals, and 3) the relationships and collaborative capabilities between users of these different technologies. In this paper, the authors use a scoping review to explore relevant conceptual frameworks for asymmetric interaction, mediation technology, and computer supported cooperative work to clarify the dimensions of asymmetry and synthesize the literature into a Composite framework for Asymmetric VR (CAVR). The paper concludes with suggestions of ways to test and expand the framework in order to guide future research as it identifies the most-beneficial interaction paradigms for co-located asymmetric VR.

Virtual reality systems typically allow users to physically walk and turn, but virtual environments (VEs) often exceed the available walking space. Teleporting has become a common user interface, whereby the user aims a laser pointer to indicate the desired location, and sometimes orientation, in the VE before being transported without self-motion cues. This study evaluated the influence of rotational self-motion cues on spatial updating performance when teleporting, and whether the importance of rotational cues varies across movement scale and environment scale. Participants performed a triangle completion task by teleporting along two outbound path legs before pointing to the unmarked path origin. Rotational self-motion reduced overall errors across all levels of movement scale and environment scale, though it also introduced a slight bias toward under-rotation. The importance of rotational self-motion was exaggerated when navigating large triangles and when the surrounding environment was large. Navigating a large triangle within a small VE brought participants closer to surrounding landmarks and boundaries, which led to greater reliance on piloting (landmark-based navigation) and therefore reduced-but did not eliminate-the impact of rotational self-motion cues. These results indicate that rotational self-motion cues are important when teleporting, and that navigation can be improved by enabling piloting.

In training assembly workers in a factory, there are often barriers such as cost and lost productivity due to shutdown. The use of virtual reality (VR) training has the potential to reduce these costs. This research compares virtual bimanual haptic training versus traditional physical training and the effectiveness for learning transfer. In a mixed experimental design, participants were assigned to either virtual or physical training and trained by assembling a wooden burr puzzle as many times as possible during a twenty minute time period. After training, participants were tested using the physical puzzle and were retested again after two weeks. All participants were trained using brightly colored puzzle pieces. To examine the effect of color, testing involved the assembly of colored physical parts and natural wood colored physical pieces. Spatial ability as measured using a mental rotation test, was shown to correlate with the number of assemblies they were able to complete in the training. While physical training outperformed virtual training, after two weeks the virtually trained participants actually improved their test assembly times. The results suggest that the color of the puzzle pieces helped the virtually trained participants in remembering the assembly process.

In this study a keystroke-based authentication system is implemented on a large-scale free-text keystroke data set, where cost effective kernel-based learning algorithms are designed to enable trade-off between computational cost and accuracy performance. The authentication process evaluates the user's typing behavior on a vocabulary of words, where the judgments based on each word are concatenated by weighted votes, whose weights are also trained to provide optimal fusion of independent judgments. A novel truncated-RBF kernel is also implemented to provide better cost-performance trade-off. Experimental results validate the cost-effectiveness of the developed authentication system.

Virtual reality systems commonly include both monocular and binocular depth cues, which have the potential to provide viewers with a realistic impression of spatial properties of the virtual environment. However, when multiple viewers share the same display, only one viewer typically receives the projectively correct images. All other viewers experience the same images despite displacement from the center of projection (CoP). Three experiments evaluated perceptual distortions caused by displacement from the CoP and compared those percepts to predictions of models based on monocular and binocular viewing geometry. Leftward and rightward displacement from the CoP caused virtual angles on the ground plane to be judged as larger and smaller, respectively, compared to judgments from the CoP. Backward and forward displacement caused rectangles on the ground plane to be judged as larger and smaller in depth, respectively, compared to judgments from the CoP. Judgment biases were in the same direction as cue-based model predictions but of smaller magnitude. Displacement from the CoP had asymmetric effects on perceptual judgments, unlike model predictions. Perceptual distortion occurred with monocular cues alone but was exaggerated when binocular cues were added. The results are grounded in terms of practical implications for multiuser virtual environments.

In this paper, we describe an experiment designed to evaluate the effectiveness of three interfaces for surveillance or remote control using live 360-degree video feeds from a person or vehicle in the field. Video feeds are simulated using a game engine. While locating targets within a 3D terrain using a 2D 360-degree interface, participants indicated perceived egocentric directions to targets and later placed targets on an overhead view of the terrain. Interfaces were compared based on target finding and map placement performance. Results suggest 1) non-seamless interfaces with visual boundaries facilitate spatial understanding, 2) correct perception of self-to-object relationships is not correlated with understanding object-to-object relationships within the environment, and 3) increased video game experience corresponds with better spatial understanding of an environment observed in 360-degrees. This work can assist researchers of panoramic video systems in evaluating the optimal interface for observation and teleoperation of remote systems.

In this paper we present the result of a user interface designed to increase social affinity between two remote collaborators working on design tasks. The results suggest that the tool is successful in creating an overall affinity that is 14.6% higher than the control group without adding a significant difference in task completion time. Affinity is measured with a framework with demonstrated inter-rater reliability using codes assigned to specific conversational patterns and video recorded interactions. This research approach provides a platform for future work codifying affinity and trust among larger numbers of remote collaborators.

While training participants to assemble a 3D wooden burr puzzle, we compared results of training in a stereoscopic, head tracked virtual assembly environment utilizing haptic devices and data gloves with real world training. While virtual training took participants about three times longer, the group that used the virtual environment was able to assemble the physical test puzzle about three times faster than the group trained with the physical puzzle. We present several possible cognitive explanations for these results and our plans for future exploration of the factors that improve the effectiveness of virtual process training over real world experience.

Stereoscopic depth cues improve depth perception and increase immersion within virtual environments (VEs). However, improper display of these cues can distort perceived distances and directions. Consider a multi-user VE, where all users view identical stereoscopic images regardless of physical location. In this scenario, cues are typically customized for one "leader" equipped with a head-tracking device. This user stands at the center of projection (CoP) and all other users ("followers") view the scene from other locations and receive improper depth cues. This paper examines perceived depth distortion when viewing stereoscopic VEs from follower perspectives and the impact of these distortions on collaborative spatial judgments. Pairs of participants made collaborative depth judgments of virtual shapes viewed from the CoP or after displacement forward or backward. Forward and backward displacement caused perceived depth compression and expansion, respectively, with greater compression than expansion. Furthermore, distortion was less than predicted by a ray-intersection model of stereo geometry. Collaboration times were significantly longer when participants stood at different locations compared to the same location, and increased with greater perceived depth discrepancy between the two viewing locations. These findings advance our understanding of spatial distortions in multi-user VEs, and suggest a strategy for reducing distortion.

The Extensible Problem-Specific Tutor (xPST) system was created to facilitate the creation of intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) on existing software and web-based interfaces. This research introduces xPST and describes an exploration of the ease of authoring an xPST tutor for three web-based tasks. Participants demonstrated a quick learning curve and alternated their attentional focus regularly among the three components of the xPST authoring system.