Motion sickness, in addition to its persistent long-term effects, also exhibits short-term effects characterized as transient physiological discomfort, which changes rapidly with variations in locomotion. However, such discomforts are challenging to assess using current subjective scales and objective physiological measurements. To tackle this issue, this paper suggests continuous measurement methods designed specifically for evaluating transient physiological discomfort during VR locomotion. Through a user-elicitation study, three preferred measurement methods—’squeezing ball’, ’sliding thumb’, and ’rubbing thigh’—were identified. These techniques were then evaluated for reliability, validity, attention, presence, and workload, with ’sliding thumb’ identified as the most effective option. The paper expands traditional measurement methods to capture users’ physiological experiences in VR interactions, offering practical choices for researchers in this field along with an in-depth discussion of design considerations, detailed implementation guidelines, and potential ways to optimize the VR experiences utilizing the measurement data.

Grasping objects typically relies on visual input to pre-shape the hand and plan movement trajectories, a process often disrupted in visually impaired (VI) individuals. ElectroGrasp is a wearable electro-tactile system that delivers anticipatory proprioceptive and tactile information through three complementary modalities: Grasping Orientation, Size, and Shape. This system dynamically conveys spatial features-thereby enhancing anticipatory grasp planning and control through tactile perception. Three experiments were conducted to evaluate ElectroGrasp. The first examined tactile pattern discriminability, size perception thresholds, and the reliability of orientation encoding. The second assessed learning time with ElectroGrasp and its effectiveness in supporting spatial representation, demonstrating accurate spatial perception of objects from electrotactile input. The third compared grasp aperture under audio versus electrotactile cues, revealing that ElectroGrasp reduced hand overshoot and regrasp corrections. Overall, the results demonstrate that ElectroGrasp provides efficient tactile information, enables improved anticipatory grasp planning comparable to visual cues, and offers a novel assistive solution for VI users.

Users are more likely to experience visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) during passive motion in virtual reality (VR), particularly in passive virtual driving scenarios. To solve this challenge, we propose a Multi-sensory Simulation of Wind Sensation (MSSWS) method to alleviate VIMS symptoms by enhancing the user’s sense of embodiment (SoE). The method utilizes low-fidelity airflow simulation to align vestibular perception with visual, auditory, and tactile cues. Then, we developed an interactive wind simulation helmet that can generate low-fidelity airflow along four directional axes around the user’s head, and implemented a passive virtual motorcycle riding environment with synchronized visual and auditory feedback matching the airflow patterns. A user experiment was conducted to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of MSSWS in enhancing SoE and reducing VIMS under various conditions, including helmet activation states, speed variations, and movement directions, with additional validation conducted in a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE). Experimental results show that MSSWS significantly enhances sense of presence and SoE while substantially reducing VIMS during passive navigation. Notably, MSSWS shows significantly greater effects on VIMS in high-risk conditions characterized by rapid speed changes and multi-directional movement.

Emotion regulation (ER) is a central topic in perception and cognition. With the development of virtual reality (VR) technology, its high levels of immersion, interactivity, and controllability have made it a promising tool for ER. Recent studies have demonstrated that VR-based interventions can enhance ER. However, the effectiveness of ER largely depends on the strategies employed. This critical factor has often been underexplored in VR-based ER research. To address this gap, this study investigates the effectiveness and neurophysiological characteristics of four ER strategies: distraction, emotional expression, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression in VR, using both subjective ratings and objective neurophysiological data. A non-VR self-regulation strategy serves as the baseline. The results reveal that VR-based ER strategies significantly enhance individual emotional valence. For low-arousal negative emotions, distraction, emotional expression, and cognitive reappraisal show significant regulatory effects in VR, with emotional expression exhibiting the strongest impact. For high-arousal negative emotions, only cognitive reappraisal is effective. In contrast, expressive suppression does not produce significant effects for either type of negative emotion. These findings further support the role of VR in facilitating ER and provide empirical evidence for the informed selection of VR-based ER strategies. This research also contributes to the theoretical foundation of affective computing.

This work presents Dual-Stick, a novel controller with two sticks connected at the end that innovates a Dual-Ray interaction paradigm to enrich raycasting input in Virtual Reality (VR). Dual-Stick leverages the inherent human dexterity in using everyday tools such as clamps and tweezers to adjust the relative angle between two sticks. This design supports Dual-Ray interactions that provide with a heuristics-based enhanced mechanism. It also offers more flexible manipulation by taking advantages of additional degrees of freedom provided by clamping angle. We conducted two studies to evaluate the effectiveness of Dual-Ray in target selection and manipulation tasks. The results indicated that Dual-Ray significantly improved efficiency in target selection compared to single-ray input but did not outperform the enhanced single-ray technique. In terms of manipulation, Dual-Ray effectively reduced completion time and mode switching compared to single-ray input.

Touch interaction is one of the fundamental interaction paradigms in XR, as users have become very familiar with touch interactions on physical touchscreens. However, users typically need to perform extensive arm movements for engaging with XR user interfaces much larger than mobile device touchscreens. We propose the SummonBrush technique to facilitate easy access to hidden windows while interacting with large XR user interfaces, requiring minimal arm movements. The SummonBrush technique adds a virtual brush to the index fingertip of a user's hand. Upon making contact with a virtual user interface, the brush bends and diverges and ink starts to diffuse in it. The more the brush bends and diverges, the more the ink diffuses. The user can summon hidden windows or background applications in situ, which is achieved by firstly pressing the brush against the user interface to make ink fully fill the brush and then perform swipe gestures. Also, the user can press the brush against the thumbtails of background applications in situ to quickly cycle them through. Ecological studies showed that SummonBrush significantly reduced the arm movement time by 39% and 34% in summoning hidden windows and activating/closing background applications, respectively, leading to a significant decrease in reported physical demand.

Multi-user locomotion in VR has grown increasingly common, posing numerous challenges. A key factor contributing to these challenges is the gaps in experience between active and passive users during co-locomotion. Yet, there remains a limited understanding of how and to what extent these experiential gaps manifest in diverse multi-user co-locomotion scenarios. This paper systematically explores the gaps in physiological and psychological experience indicators between active and passive users across various locomotion situations. Such situations include when active users walk, fly by joystick, or teleport, and passive users stand still or look around. We also assess the impact of factors such as sub-locomotion type, speed/teleport-interval, motion sickness susceptibility, etc. Accordingly, we delineate acceptability disparities between active and passive users, offering insights into leveraging notable experimental findings to mitigate discomfort during co-locomotion through avoidance or intervention.

Sketching in Virtual Reality (VR) is challenging mainly due to the absence of physical surface support and virtual depth perception cues, which induce high cognitive and sensorimotor load. This paper presents WieldingCanvas, an interactive VR sketching platform that integrates canvas manipulations to draw lines and curves in 3D. Informed by real-life examples of two-handed creative activities, WieldingCanvas interprets users’ spatial gestures to move, swing, rotate, transform, or fold a virtual canvas, whereby users simply draw primitive strokes on the canvas, which are turned into finer and more sophisticated shapes via the manipulation of the canvas. We evaluated the capability and user experience of WieldingCanvas with two studies where participants were asked to sketch target shapes. A set of freehand sketches of high aesthetic qualities were created, and the results demonstrated that WieldingCanvas can assist users with creating 3D sketches.

Virtual reality (VR) is found to present significant cognitive challenges due to its immersive nature and frequent sensory conflicts. This study systematically investigates the impact of sensory conflicts induced by VR remapping techniques on cognitive fatigue, and unveils their correlation. We utilized three remapping methods (haptic repositioning, head-turning redirection, and giant resizing) to create different types of sensory conflicts, and measured perceptual thresholds to induce various intensities of the conflicts. Through experiments involving cognitive tasks along with subjective and physiological measures, we found that all three remapping methods influenced the onset and severity of cognitive fatigue, with visual-vestibular conflict having the greatest impact. Interestingly, visual-experiential/memory conflict showed a mitigating effect on cognitive fatigue, emphasizing the role of novel sensory experiences. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of cognitive fatigue under sensory conflicts and provides insights for designing VR experiences that align better with human perceptual and cognitive capabilities.

Using VR in reclining & lying positions is getting common for users, but upward views caused by posture have to be redirected to be parallel to the ground as when users are standing. This affects users’ locomotion performances in VR due to potential physical restrictions, and the visual-vestibular-proprioceptive conflict. This paper is among the first to investigate the suited locomotion methods and how reclining & lying positions and redirection affect them in such conditions. A user-elicitation study was carried out to construct a set of locomotion methods based on users’ preferences when they were in different reclining & lying positions. A second study developed user-preferred ’tapping’ and ’chair rotating’ gestures, by evaluating their performances at various body reclining angles, we measured the general impacts of posture and redirection. The results showed that these methods worked effectively, but exposed some shortcomings, and users performed worst at 45° reclining angles. Finally, four upgraded methods were designed and verified to improve the locomotion performances.

When users use Virtual Reality (VR) in nontraditional postures, such as while reclining or lying in relaxed positions, their views lean upwards and need to be corrected, to make sure they see upright contents and perceive the interactions as if they were standing. Such upright redirection is excepted to cause visual-vestibular-proprioceptive conflict, affecting users’ internal perceptions (e.g., body ownership, presence, simulator sickness) and external perceptions (e.g., egocentric space perception) in VR. Different body reclining angles may affect vestibular sensitivity and lead to the dynamic weighting of multi-sensory signals in the sensory integration. In the paper, we investigated the impact of upright redirection on users’ perceptions, with users’ physical bodies tilted at various angles backward and views upright redirected accordingly. The results showed that upright redirection led to simulator sickness, confused self-awareness, weak upright illusion, and increased space perception deviations to various extents when users are at different reclining positions, and the situations were the worst at the 45° conditions. Based on these results, we designed some illusion-based and sensory-based methods, that were shown effective in reducing the impact of sensory conflict through preliminary evaluations.

This paper studies a set of MR technologies for middle school experimental teaching environments and develops a multi-channel MR user interface called Dream-Experiment. The goal of Dream-Experiment is to improve the traditional MR user interface, so that users can get a real, natural 3D interactive experience like real experiments, but without danger and pollution. In terms of visual presentation, we design multi-camera collaborative registration to realize robust 6-DoF MR interactive space, and also define a complete rendering pipeline to provide improved processing of virtual-real objects' occlusion including translucent devices. In the virtual-real interaction, we provide six interaction modes that support visual interaction, tangible interaction, virtual-real gestures with touching, voice, thermal feeling, and olfactory feeling. After users' testing, we find that Dream-Experiment has better interactive efficiency and user experience than traditional MR environments.

The mixed reality makes the user's realism strong or weak, depending on the fusion effect of the virtual object and the real scene, and the key factor affecting the virtual-real fusion effect is whether the virtual and real object in the synthetic scene has occlusion consistency. In this paper, a method is proposed that utilizes color and depth information provided by an RGB-D camera to improved occlusion. In this method, based on the GPU, extracting the ROI area where the virtual object is located (the area where the virtual-real occlusion occurs),then introducing the real scence color image as the guide image to modified joint bilateral filtering the depth image to repair the wrong edge information and “black hole” of the depth image;pixel-by-pixel point to determine the depth relationship between the virtual object and real object, to achieve virtual-real occlusion rendering blend;for the still existing “sawtooth artifacts” using delay-coloring only fuzzy local boundary algorithm, to achieve accurate and smoothing edges virtual-real occlusion to enhance visual effects.

Soil Moisture Content (SMC) plays an important role in different environmental studies. In this study, to assess SMC, a method based on reflectance values in red and NIR bands from HJ-1B is introduced. This model divides SNIR-R into three separate regions based on the pixels NDVI values and fits three different regression equations to each region. All the achieved results showed that as NDVI values get larger, the accuracy of the proposed models decreases. Furthermore, in this study, the model was applied for assessment of SMC. It was concluded that satellite estimated SMC is highly correlated with field measured data.

UAV image registration is a key in the process of UAV image matching and application. Based on a large number of images, overlapping irregular and lack of ground control point, paper put forward the image registration algorithm based on overlapping area detection. Firstly the algorithm uses the improved distributed search method based on phase correlation method to search overlapping area and get the translation and rotation parameters of the original image, which is very effective for rotating image. Then a new angular point matching method combined with the offset and rotation angle is used, which is based on Harris. The experimental results show that the method can be applied to UAV remote sensing image registration properly, and has the characteristics of efficiency, accuracy and robustness.