This paper investigates the relationship between perceived object motion and the experience of time in virtual environments. We developed an application to measure how the motion properties of virtual objects and the degree of immersion and embodiment may affect the time experience. A first study (n = 145) was conducted remotely using an online video survey, while a second study (n = 60) was conducted under laboratory conditions in virtual reality (VR). Participants in both studies experienced seven different virtual objects in a randomized order and then answered questions about time experience. The VR study added an "embodiment" condition in which participants were either represented by a virtual full body or lacked any form of virtual body representation. In both studies, time was judged to pass faster when viewing oscillating motion in immersive and non-immersive settings and independently of the presence or absence of a virtual body. This trend was strongest when virtual pendulums were displayed. Both studies also found a significant inverse correlation between the passage of time and boredom. Our results support the development of applications that manipulate the perception of time in virtual environments for therapeutic use, for instance, for disorders such as depression, autism, and schizophrenia. Disturbances in the perception of time are known to be associated with these disorders.

This article explores the effect of one's body representation on time perception. Time Perception is modulated by a variety of factors including, e.g., the current situation or activity, it can display significant disturbances caused by psychological disorders, and it is influenced by emotional and interoceptive states, i.e., "the sense of the physiological condition of the body". We investigated this relation between one's own body and the perception of time in a novel Virtual Reality (VR) experiment explicitly fostering user activity. Forty-Eight participants randomly experienced different degrees of embodiment: i) without an avatar (low), ii) with hands (medium), and iii) with a high-quality avatar (high). Participants had to repeatedly activate a virtual lamp and estimate the duration of time intervals as well as judge the passage of time. Our results show a significant effect of embodiment on time perception: time passes slower in the low embodiment condition compared to the medium and high conditions. In contrast to prior work, the study provides missing evidence that this effect is independent of the level of activity of participants: In our task, users were prompted to repeatedly perform body actions, thereby ruling-out a potential influence of the level of activity. Importantly, duration judgements in both the millisecond and minute ranges seemed unaffected by variations in embodiment. Taken together, these results lead to a better understanding of the relationship between the body and time.

The perception of time is closely related to our well-being. Psycho-pathological conditions such as depression, schizophrenia and autism are often linked to a disturbed sense of time. In this paper we present a novel framework called Metachron, which is intended to support research in the field of time perception and manipulation in Virtual Reality (VR). Our system allows the systematic modification of events in real time along the three main event axes i) Velocity, ii) Syncronicity and iii) Density. Our future work will investigate the influence of each dimension on the passage of time (varying velocity of time flow) and the structure of time (varying synchronicity of events), which should provide insights for the design of VR diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

In this paper, we investigated the impact of an egocentric simulated frame of reference, the so-called simulated CAVE, on three type of travel techniques: Steering, Jumping and Sliding. Contrary to suggestions from previous work, no significant differences were found regarding spatial awareness between all techniques with or without the simulated CAVE. Our first results also showed a negative effect of the simulated CAVE on participants' motion sickness for every technique, while confirming that the Jumping is eliciting less motion sickness with or without it.

In this paper, we describe the implementation and performance of a Virtual Audience perception model for Virtual Reality (VR). The model is a VR adaptation of an existing desktop model. The system allows a user in VR to easily build and experience a wide variety of atmospheres with small or large groups of virtual agents.The paper describes results of early evaluations for this model in VR. Our first scalability benchmark results demonstrated the ability to simultaneously handle one hundred virtual agents without significantly affecting there commended frame rate for VR applications.This research is conducted in the context of a classroom simulation software for teachers’ training.

This paper presents a novel technique of navigation in Virtual Reality (VR) called Drone-Steering. This technique has been designed to facilitate path learning and traveling in VR by reducing both cybersickness and disorientation. We compared this technique to traditional Hand-Steering in a landmark-free environment. Our first experiment confirmed a significantly lower level of cybersickness during traveling and significantly better path learning. We believe that our technique constitutes a promising alternative to current VR navigation techniques, and will especially interest researchers and developers targeting large VR environments.

This article investigates the impact of waiting in Virtual Reality (VR) on the perception of time. We manipulated the visual quality of a virtual room replicating a real one (360-picture vs. 3D-model) with and without avatar embodiment (no-avatar vs. avatar). We only observed a significant difference in the estimated time duration between the real and the virtual worlds when using no avatar within a 3D model of the room. Our early results suggest that a VR environment with an avatar and a simple 3D model or 360 picture room is not significantly perturbing time perception and thus could be used for diagnosis and therapy of psychiatric conditions related to altered time perception.

In this paper we present a preliminary study of the impact of avatar realism on illusion of virtual body ownership (IVBO), when using a full body virtual mirror for fitness training. We evaluated three main types of user representation: realistic and non-realistic avatars as well as no avatar at all. Our results revealed that same-gender realistic human avatar elicited a slightly higher level of illusion and performance. However qualitative analysis of open questions revealed that the feeling of power was higher with non-realistic strong-looking avatars.