Cross-platform virtual environments allow users to experience interactive virtual places from a variety of peripherals, such as mobiles, computers or virtual reality headsets. These devices offer different interactivity and immersion levels, which shape the subjective experience of presence in the virtual space. Moreover, users may be provided with virtual representations, or avatars, to evolve in the environment. Controlling such avatars will likely induce a sense of embodiment and an identification toward these representations. When using cross-platform applications, users may have to transpose their experience across different devices, likely transporting their avatar and prior experience with them. In this context, understanding the impact of device transitions and prior experience may have over user experience constructs appears critical. We designed an experiment to explore their effects, which primarily unveiled that transitioning from high-immersion devices to low-immersion ones causes a significant drop in users' sense of presence, embodiment and identification. These results are supposedly due to a comparison effect between devices emphasized by the strong expectations created by the first exposure in VR. Our study further unveiled a strong connection between the sense of embodiment and character identification demonstrated by statistical correlations. It finally confirmed that identification may persist across devices and exposures, shedding light on this avatar-related construct for research on cross-device realities.

Embodied representations are known to influence user behavior in virtual environments through stereotypes associated with their appearance, a phenomenon known as the Proteus effect, or through perceived affordances. The latter concept refers to the suggested ways of interacting with the environment as perceived by the capabilities of the user's virtual representation. The inherent ability of virtual reality to support non-anthropomorphic avatars, enabling new interaction modalities, paves the way for a deeper understanding of affordances in virtual environments. We designed an experiment to assess the effect of embodying a chimeric hand (crab claw), compared to a regular hand, on participants' sense of embodiment, presence, character plausibility, mental workload, and behavior. Following a within-subject design, participants took part in a gamified task consisting of finding a key in a wrecked pirate ship. As the key could be hidden in containers of different durability, their strategy (opening or destroying objects) was used as an objective measure. Results indicated a high perceived usability and a low mental workload with both virtual limbs. Participants also performed hitting actions more frequently when using the biomimetic limb than when using the humanoid hand representation. A higher perceived change in the body schema was reported when embodying the crab claw, but a higher sense of body ownership and agency were observed with the anthropomorphic hand. Results revealed no significant difference in terms of plausibility.

ABSTRACT This article presents the architecture of MemorIA, an integrative system that combines existing AI technologies into a coherent educational framework for creating interactive historical agents, with the aim of fostering students' learning interest. MemorIA generates animated digital portraits of historical figures, synchronizing facial expressions with synthesized speech to enable natural conversations with students. The system leverages NVIDIA Audio2Face for real‐time facial animation with first‐order motion model for portrait manipulation, achieving fluid interaction through low‐latency audio‐visual streaming. To assess our architecture in a field situation, we conducted a pilot study in middle school history classes, where students and teachers engaged in direct conversation with a virtual Julius Caesar during Roman history lessons. Students asked questions about ancient Rome, receiving contextually appropriate responses. While qualitative feedback suggests a positive trend toward increased student participation, some weaknesses and ethical considerations emerged. Based on this assessment, we discuss implementation challenges, suggest architectural improvements, and explore potential applications across various disciplines.

The way users interact with Virtual Reality (VR) environments plays a crucial role in shaping their experience when embodying an avatar. How avatars are perceived by users significantly influences their behavior based on stereotypes, a phenomenon known as the Proteus effect. The psychological concept of affordances may also appear relevant when it comes to interact through avatars and is yet underexplored. Indeed, understanding how virtual representations suggest possibilities for action has attracted considerable attention in the human-computer interaction community, but only few studies clearly address the use of affordances. Of particular interest is the fact aesthetic features of avatars may signify false affordances, conflicting with users' expectations and impacting perceived plausibility of the depicted situations. Recent models of congruence and plausibility suggest altering the latter may result in unexpected consequences on other qualia like presence and embodiment. The proposed research initially aimed at exploring the operationalization of affordances as a tool to investigate the impact of congruence and plausibility manipulations on the sense of embodiment. In spite of a long and careful endeavor materialized by a preliminary assessment and two user studies, it appears our participants were primed by other internal processes that took precedence over the perception of the affordances we selected. However, we unexpectedly manipulated the internal congruence following repeated exposures (mixed design), causing a rupture in plausibility and significantly lowering scores of embodiment and task performance. The present research then constitutes a direct proof of a relationship between a break in plausibility and a break in embodiment.

Space agencies are in the process of drawing up carefully thought-out Concepts of Operations (ConOps) for future human missions on the Moon. These are typically assessed and validated through costly and logistically demanding analogue field studies. While interactive simulations in Virtual Reality (VR) offer a comparatively cost-effective alternative, they have faced criticism for lacking the fidelity of real-world deployments. This paper explores the applicability of passive haptic interfaces in bridging the gap between simulated and real-world ConOps assessments. Leveraging passive haptic props (equipment mockup and astronaut gloves), we virtually recreated the Apollo 12 mission procedure and assessed it with experienced astronauts and other space experts. Quantitative and qualitative findings indicate that haptics increased presence and embodiment, thus improving perceived simulation fidelity and validity of user reflections. We conclude by discussing the potential role of passive haptic modalities in facilitating early-stage ConOps assessments for human endeavours on the Moon and beyond.

Virtual reality (VR) provides users with the ability to substitute their physical appearance by embodying virtual characters (avatars) using head-mounted displays and motion-capture technologies. Previous research demonstrated that the sense of embodiment toward an avatar can impact user behavior and cognition. In this paper, we present an experiment designed to investigate whether embodying a well-known creative genius could enhance participants' creative performance. Following a preliminary online survey ( N = 157) to select a famous character suited to the purpose of this study, we developed a VR application allowing participants to embody Leonardo da Vinci or a self-avatar. Self-avatars were approximately matched with participants in terms of skin tone and morphology. 40 participants took part in three tasks seamlessly integrated in a virtual workshop. The first task was based on a Guilford's Alternate Uses test (GAU) to assess participants' divergent abilities in terms of fluency and originality. The second task was based on a Remote Associates Test (RAT) to evaluate convergent abilities. Lastly, the third task consisted in designing potential alternative uses of an object displayed in the virtual environment using a 3D sketching tool. Participants embodying Leonardo da Vinci demonstrated significantly higher divergent thinking abilities, with a substantial difference in fluency between the groups. Conversely, participants embodying a self-avatar performed significantly better in the convergent thinking task. Taken together, these results promote the use of our virtual embodiment approach, especially in applications where divergent creativity plays an important role, such as design and innovation.

We present REC12, a Unity open-source tool for developers and researchers to record, export and replay the movements of virtual reality users and virtual characters. Recording both real-time body tracking and animations, this tool makes it possible to export skeletal data in a comma-separated values (CSV) file allowing to process and analyze users’ movements. We also provide a feature to reload and replay saved movements directly from the CSV file on virtual characters in a 3D environment.

Innovation is defined by a range of activities having different goals but driven by the same purpose. For example, in the ending phases, the aim will be to put forward precise concepts, while upstream of innovation, the activities are defined by the will to investigate the subject and increase the area of knowledge and concepts helpful for the conception of new products. This study takes place in the latter contexts because these are the ones where tools are the most variable and de facto, the least normalised. Our aim was to study user experience felt by the usage of these tools as well as their impact on creativity and ideas’ communicability. To do this, we led an experimental study with 79 participants comparing four tools: pen & paper, Virtual-Reality (VR) drawing, VRCAD, and traditional CAD. Thanks to the UEQ (Laugwitz et al., 2008) and judges method of Cropley and Cropley (2008), we measured the user-exprience and the creativity. Then we compared the level of creativity, user-experience and communicability induced by each tool. The results reveal that the user experience arising from the tool influences the amount and the quality of the ideas. Moreover, we show that the fewer standardises interactions the tools have, the greater the communicability of ideas.

The usage of biofeedback in Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming more and more important in providing fully immersive experiences. With the rapid evolution of physiological monitoring technologies it is important to study how different modalities of biofeedback can alter user experience. While previous studies use biofeedback as an additional interaction mechanic. We created a protocol to assess heart rate control competency and used the results of said protocol to immerse our participants in a VR experience where the biofeedback mechanics are mandatory to complete a game. We observed consistent results between our competency scale and the participants' mastery of the biofeedback game mechanic in the VR experience. We also found that the biofeedback mechanic has a significant impact on engagement.

This paper presents the first study of a series of experiments aiming to investigate the impact of avatar visual fidelity on user experience with emphasis on the sense of embodiment in immersive virtual environments (IVE). This first experiment requires participants to evaluate three characters with several levels of visual fidelity: a robot, a suit and a virtual doppelganger. Statistical analyses were performed to assess the impact of truthfulness (degree of similarity between users and avatars) and self-esteem on perceived avatars' attractiveness. Our results demonstrate the positive impact of truthfulness on the evaluation of attractiveness and suggest a correlation between self-esteem and avatar selection.

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Journal Article Visual search in dynamic 3D visualisations of unstructured picture collections Get access Olivier Christmann, Olivier Christmann * a Arts et Metiers ParisTech, LAMPA, 2 boulevard du Ronceray, 49000 Angers, France * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses:[email protected], [email protected] (O. Christmann), [email protected] (N. Carbonell), [email protected] (S. Richir). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Noëlle Carbonell, Noëlle Carbonell b Nancy-Université, LORIA, INRIA, BP 239, 54506 Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy Cedex, France Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Simon Richir Simon Richir a Arts et Metiers ParisTech, LAMPA, 2 boulevard du Ronceray, 49000 Angers, France Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Interacting with Computers, Volume 22, Issue 5, September 2010, Pages 399–416, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2010.02.005 Published: 26 February 2010 Article history Received: 15 March 2009 Revision received: 21 February 2010 Accepted: 22 February 2010 Published: 26 February 2010

The paper presents a 3D interactive representation of fairly large picture collections which facilitates browsing through unstructured sets of icons or pictures. Implementation of this representation implies choosing between two visualization strategies: users may either manipulate the view (OV) or be immersed in it (IV). The paper first presents this representation, then describes an empirical study (17 participants) aimed at assessing the utility and usability of each view. Subjective judgements in questionnaires and debriefings were varied: 7 participants preferred the IV view, 4 the OV one, and 6 could not choose between the two. Visual acuity and visual exploration strategies seem to have exerted a greater influence on participants' preferences than task performance or feeling of immersion.