Extensive research has examined presence and basic psychological needs (drawing on Self-Determination Theory) in digital media. While prior work offers hints of potential connections, we lack a systematic account of whether and how distinct presence dimensions map onto the basic needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We surveyed 301 social VR users and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Results show that social presence predicts all three needs, while self-presence predicts competence and relatedness, and spatial presence shows no direct or moderating effects. Gender and age moderated these relationships: women benefited more from social presence for autonomy and relatedness, men from self- and spatial presence for competence and autonomy, and younger users showed stronger associations between social presence and relatedness, and between self-presence and autonomy. These findings position presence as a motivational mechanism shaped by demographic factors. The results offer theoretical insights and practical implications for designing inclusive, need-supportive multiuser VR environments.

The sense of presence is central to immersive experiences in Virtual Reality (VR), and particularly salient in socially rich platforms like social VR. While prior studies have explored various aspects related to presence, less is known about how ongoing usage behaviors shape presence in everyday engagement. To address this gap, we examine whether usage intensity, captured through frequency of use, session duration, and years of VR experience, predicts presence in social VR. A survey of 295 users assessed overall, social, spatial, and self-presence using validated scales. Results show that both frequency and duration consistently predict higher presence across all dimensions, with interaction effects indicating that frequent and extended sessions synergistically amplify the experience of “being there.” These effects were stable across age and gender. Our findings extend presence research beyond the laboratory by identifying behavioral predictors in social VR and offer insights for building inclusive environments that reliably foster presence.

In social Virtual Reality (VR), particularly within VRChat, a significant group of users often referred to as "mutes" refrain from voice communication. This study analyzes 4212 discussion entries, including both original submissions and comments, from the r/VRchat subreddit to explore the experiences and reasons behind this practice. Our findings indicate that muteness is an integral aspect of social VR culture, yet mute users face challenges, including exposure to abusive behaviors and communication barriers in a fast-paced environment. Factors of social VR like harassment, heightened social anxiety from the immersive presence, and the complexities of identity management can discourage voice communication, leading many to adopt "muteness" as a response. This behavior can be seen within the broader context of social disability, challenging normative communication assumptions. We highlight the risks of generalizing marginalized communities and emphasize the need for further research to address and support the unique needs of these groups in social VR spaces.

Extensive research has focused on community-based moderation involving selected or volunteer moderators. The "votekick" system represents a democratized approach allowing all users to participate in moderation. Despite its widespread use in online gaming and social VR platforms, votekicking remains underexplored. This research studies how users use and perceive votekicking in VRChat, a leading social VR platform. Through thematic analysis of discussions from the Reddit community r/VRChat, our findings reveal that votekicking serves to cope with misconduct and enforce group-specific rules, but it also perpetuates toxicity such as materializing community-level biases. While praised for its immediacy and clear messaging against unacceptable behavior, votekicking's effectiveness is hindered by its reactive nature, consensus challenges, and decision-making complexities. This research contributes to broader discussions on the limitations and advantages of direct community involvement in moderation and suggests practical design improvements to address the challenges associated with votekicking.

Deep neural networks can exhibit defects that lead to erroneous decisions in safety-critical scenarios, potentially causing severe consequences. While various repair techniques exist, methods based on retraining are often costly and imprecise and existing searchbased approaches can suffer from inefficient fault localization and patch generation. This paper introduces an end-to-end multi-objective, search-based framework for repairing DNNs that couples spectrumguided fault localization with an enhanced particle-swarm patch generator, and it directly modifies neural weights to address these challenges. Our approach features a novel, two-stage fault localization technique that first uses spectrum-based analysis to identify suspicious neurons and then applies multi-objective optimization to pinpoint the most critical weights for repair. For patch generation, we employ an enhanced Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm designed for faster convergence and more effective exploration of the solution space. We evaluated our framework on multiple DNN architectures using four public datasets (Fashion-MNIST, CIFAR-10, LFW, and GTSRB). The proposed fault localization method led to an 18% increase in repair rate on the Fashion-MNIST dataset compared to state-of-the-art techniques. Furthermore, our end-to-end framework successfully reduced the most frequent misclassification type in a pretrained model by 31.3 % and proved effective for the adaptive repair of fully-trained models without causing catastrophic performance degradation. The results demonstrate that our approach offers a more precise and less disruptive alternative to retraining, providing a practical and cost-efficient method for the targeted repair of DNNs.

In social Virtual Reality (VR) environments, the significant trend of 'mirror dwellers,' users who often use virtual mirrors to engage with their avatars, has emerged. This study examines discussions from r/VRchat to explore the reasons for this behavior and how it is perceived within the broader community. Our findings highlight the critical role of mirrors in compensating for the sensory limitations of VR, particularly the lack of physical feedback. Users often turn to mirrors to view parts of their avatar that are not accessible from a first-person perspective. Additionally, our research uncovers that a limited Field-Of-View (FOV) hinders the development of a strong connection between users and their avatars, further driving the need for mirrors. However, while using mirrors to mitigate FOV and physical feedback limitations can be helpful, it may also disrupt social interaction in VR environments, as the excessive reliance on mirrors can hinder the social experience in VR for others. This research deepens our understanding of user behavior in social VR and provides insights that could guide future design improvements to enrich the overall user experience.

This study explores the use of 'blocking' as a safety tool in social VR platforms, a feature widely implemented to protect users from harassment. Despite its prevalence, little research investigates the reasons users block others and how they perceive the feature.To address this gap, we analyzed discussions from r/VRChat, r/AltspaceVR, r/HorizonWorld, and r/RecRoom, using thematic analysis. Our findings reveal that users block others for various reasons, extending beyond mere disruption avoidance to include personal preferences of avatars and social management such as blocking a friend for a disagreement. Furthermore, the study highlights the empowering roles and the limitations of blocking as a solution to harassment. The study contributes to understanding user behavior in social VR and offers insights for developing more effective safety tools in these immersive environments.

Drinking in social VR has become popular, yet little is known about how users perceive and experience alcohol consumption while immersed in virtual spaces with others, as well as its potential harm and negative effects on their offline and online lives. To better understand this emerging phenomenon from the perspective of both drinkers and non-drinkers, we analyzed public discussions from the r/VRchat online community on users’ perceptions, and experiences with alcohol consumption in social VR. Heavy drinking is prevalent. We find that VR drinkers feel less intoxicated, which makes them drink more without being aware of it. Anti-cybersickness designs may affect users’ perception of vertigo, even if the vertigo is not caused by VR. We discuss how affordances that support meaningful activities (i.e., sense of presence, embodiment, and social interactions) exacerbate alcohol abuse. We propose implications for the design of safer social VR experiences for both drinkers and non-drinkers.

Abstract Social Virtual Reality (VR) is growing in popularity and has drawn the attention of HCI academics. Social VR experiences harassment just like other online environments. The Trust System (TS) in VRChat, one of the most prominent social VR platforms, is designed to measure and indicate users’ trustworthiness in order to reduce toxicity in the platform. In this research, we analyzed data from “r/VRChat,” to understand how users perceive the system. We found that users interpret the system differently. Problems in its implementation cause distrust. The trust ranks, while intended to promote positive interactions, can actually lead to stereotyping and discourage communication between users of different ranks. The hierarchical structure within the ranks exacerbates discrimination and conflicts, particularly against the low-ranked users. We further discuss that trust ranks present challenges to newcomers and contribute to a competitive atmosphere that hinders the formation of less toxic norms. Finally, we provide implications for the future design of similar systems.

A novel participatory livestreaming genre, Avatar Collective Streaming, is gaining traction. Beyond traditional audience participation mechanisms, such as chat messages or commands, these livestreams allow viewers to join, socially interact, and participate through avatars in a software-driven virtual scenario without requiring the presence of a human streamer. From observations of livestreaming sessions and interviews with regular users (n=23), we define the main features of this novel form of livestreaming and we analyze what makes it engaging for participants, as well as factors that limit the user experience. The use of avatars affords a strong sense of presence and participation, and together with the absence of a streamer, it shapes new forms of sociability, being together, and belonging. Challenges include repetitive content and overcrowding. We provide design implications for synchronous collective participation scenarios and opportunities for software-driven content generation.

Phantom tactile sensation (PTS) is usually experienced by participants in laboratory settings with the assistance and supervision of professionals. Extensive reports from users demonstrate they experience PTS on commercially available virtual reality (VR) platforms. We gathered and analyzed 2885 posts by 1408 users to understand how users obtain PTS and how they evaluate their PTS experience. We observed that users experience PTS in three ways: 1) starting to feel it naturally, 2) intentionally developing the ability to experience PTS, and 3) feeling it under substance use. Users perceive the sensation differently. Many people perceive PTS as positive, enhancing their immersion and bringing people closer. While other users consider it a negative experience as it exacerbates harassment issues, or the sensation itself is negative, even painful. We discuss the perceived causes of PTS and how social VR conditions users' evaluation of their PTS experience. We further reflect on PTS from the perspective of the risk of VR use in real-life scenarios. Finally, we provide design implications on employing PTS to enhance users' VR experience and reduce the negatives PTS brings.