In virtual reality, creating intelligent virtual characters has been a long-lasting endeavor. However, while researchers have investigated several aspects of a virtual character’s intelligence, little attention has been paid to the impact of the implemented intelligence levels assigned to a virtual character during human–virtual character collaboration. Thus, we conducted a within-group study ( \(N=24\) ) to explore how three different intelligence levels (low vs. medium vs. high) assigned to a virtual character can impact how study participants perceive that virtual character and interact with the task they are instructed to complete. Specifically, for our study, we developed a jigsaw puzzle game and instructed our participants to solve it with the help of a virtual character. During the jigsaw puzzle solving process, we collected application logs related to how the participants executed the task and observed the virtual environment. Moreover, after each condition, we asked the participants to respond using a questionnaire that examined their social presence, how they perceived the character’s intelligence and compared it with their own, and how they rated the virtual character’s realism. Our results indicated that the different intelligence levels assigned to the virtual characters impacted participants’ responses on several variables, including co-presence, perceived intelligence, intelligence comparison, and character interaction and behavior realism. Moreover, based on the collected logged data, we found that the intelligence levels assigned to our virtual character significantly impacted the performance of our participants. Our results could be valuable to the research community for creating more engaging experiences with intelligent virtual characters for collaborative tasks in immersive environments.

Designing interactions between humans and virtual characters requires careful consideration of various human perceptions and user experiences. While numerous studies have explored the effects of several virtual characters' properties, the impacts of the virtual character's personality and age on human perceptions and experiences have yet to be thoroughly investigated. To address this gap, we conducted a within-group study (N = 28) following a 2 (personality: egoism vs. altruism) × 2 (age: child vs. adult) design to explore how the personality and age factors influence human perception and experience during interactions with virtual characters. In each condition of our study, our participants co-solved a jigsaw puzzle with a virtual character that embodied combinations of personality and age. After each condition, participants completed a survey. We also asked them to provide written feedback at the end of the study. Our statistical analyses revealed that the virtual character's personality and age significantly influenced participants' perceptions and experiences. The personality factor affected perceptions of altruism, anthropomorphism, likability, safety, and all aspects of user experience, including perceived collaboration, rapport, emotional reactivity, and the desire for future interaction. Additionally, the virtual character's age affected our participants' ratings of the uncanny valley and likability. We also identified an interaction effect between personality and age factors on the virtual character's anthropomorphism. Based on our findings, we offered guidelines and insights for researchers aiming to design collaborative experiences with virtual characters of different personalities and ages.

Virtual character’s intelligence and task complexity are essential components for the design of collaboration between humans and virtual characters. However, studies have yet to explore the impact of a virtual character’s intelligence and task complexity during a collaboration task. To explore these impacts, we implemented a jigsaw puzzle co-solving experience and conducted a within-group study (N = 27) following a 2 (intelligence: low vs. high) × 2 (complexity: low vs. high) study design. During the puzzle co-solving process, we collected participants’ gaze data for each experimental condition. After our participants completed each condition (co-solved the jigsaw puzzle), they answered a survey that captured several variables. We found several significant main and interaction effect results indicating the impact of the virtual character’s intelligence and the task’s complexity. Specifically, the virtual character’s intelligence impacted most survey ratings, including the virtual character’s intelligence, perceived collaboration, self-confidence, and perceived contribution. Also, the task complexity affected perceived collaboration, the virtual character’s public awareness, and self-confidence. Furthermore, we found that the virtual character’s intelligence and complexity dominantly impacted our participants’ task load and perception of the virtual character’s confidence. Moreover, we found that our participants gazed at the virtual character and the puzzle piece more often than the puzzle goal across all experimental conditions. Our findings can inform the design of intelligent virtual characters that co-solve tasks with users.

Summary Midair typing has gradually become the potential mainstream of virtual reality (VR) typing, as it eliminates the setup of additional hardware devices and provides convenience for portable head‐mounted displays (HMDs). In midair typing, users type on a virtual keyboard while using their virtual hands. In addition to the lack of a dominant method for VR‐based midair typing, we still do not know the impact that different appearances of virtual hands could have on text input in VR. Thus, we picked a widely used midair typing method (i.e., the VR‐rendered QWERTY keyboard) and conducted a VR study to explore the effects of three hand appearances (i.e., abstract, mannequin, realistic hands) on typing efficiency in terms of typing accuracy, typing speed, and task load. Our within‐group study revealed that (1) the mannequin hand caused significantly higher performance on typing speed than the abstract and realistic hands, (2) the abstract hand caused significantly lower performance (more typing errors) on typing accuracy compared to the mannequin and realistic hands, and (3) participants rated the task load of using the abstract hand significantly higher than the mannequin and realistic hands.

In virtual reality (VR) applications, humans experience the provided content not only through the visual and auditory systems but also through the somatosensory system. Thus, we decided to conduct a VR study to further explore the just noticeable difference (JND) of tactile feedback to understand humans’ perceptions of tactile stimuli. Our VR study examined the JND in terms of the intensity, duration, and frequency of tactile feedback provided through commercially available vibrotactile motion controllers, the Oculus Quest 2 controllers. We instructed participants to report whether they perceived a difference between a reference (variation) and a testing stimulus at each point in the experiment for a different property (intensity, duration, and frequency) of tactile feedback. We report both positive and negative JND values for the three properties of tactile feedback. We discuss our findings and limitations and provide directions for future studies regarding tactile perception for commercially available tactile feedback devices.

A virtual reality (VR) study was conducted both in our lab setting and remotely to investigate the effects of virtual hand appearance and tactile feedback on ownership, external appearance, and tactile sensation embodiment dimensions when participants were instructed to perform an assembly task in a virtual environment. Six experimental conditions that combine hand appearances (abstract, mannequin, and realistic) and tactile feedback (tactile and no tactile) levels were examined. The results of our study indicated that: (1) the more realistic hand had a stronger effect on tactile sensation and external appearance, while the mannequin hand was associated with a greater ownership effect; (2) tactile feedback was associated with a stronger effect on external appearance compared to no tactile feedback; (3) the realistic hand model in conjunction with tactile feedback significantly affected the tactile sensation of the participants; (4) the participants in the lab setting rated the external appearance of the realistic hand model higher than the remote participants; (5) the participants exposed for less than one hour per week to VR rated the tactile sensation in the presence of tactile feedback higher, while they similarly rated the external appearance of the virtual hand model in the presence of a realistic hand model higher when compared to those who were exposed for more than one hour per week to VR; and finally, (6) the younger participants rated the tactile sensation higher than the older participants in the presence of the realistic hand model. In this paper, we discuss our findings and provide design considerations for virtual reality applications that consider virtual hands and tactile feedback.

Abstract This between‐group study investigated participants' experiences of tactile feedback patterns when asked to hug a virtual character. Five experimental conditions were developed, one with no tactile feedback and four with tactile feedback. The participants were placed in a virtual city and informed they would be meeting a virtual friend, who they were instructed to hug once the character came close to them. During the virtual hug, one of the five experimental conditions was examined. Immediately after the hug, participants were asked to complete a questionnaire to capture their experiences. The results obtained from this study indicated that: (1) even if the tactile feedback is not considered to be highly accurate in terms of timing, duration, and position, as long as it is perceived as less persistent, it provides a more positive experience; (2) the perceived realism of the virtual hug is strongly correlated with the perceived realism of the tactile feedback; and (3) the female participants had a more intense interaction with the virtual character (friend) compared with the male participants. Limitations and future study directions are discussed.

Abstract Previous research has shown that student‐instructor interaction is vital to motivating students to learn a second language. However, it is unclear whether learners' demographics affect in‐game immersion and interactions with virtual instructors. This study's purpose is to investigate whether the number of years learning Japanese (foreign language familiarity) influences students' immersion levels in serious games and their interactions with virtual instructors. We developed a 3D animated Japanese roleplaying game with a virtual in‐game instructor. Eighty‐four college students enrolled in 200‐ and 300‐level Japanese language courses voluntarily participated in the study. Participants played the game and then answered a questionnaire concerning virtual character appearance, attentiveness to the instructor, and immersion in the game. The findings indicated that gender and the number of years studying Japanese significantly impact multiple measurements.