Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have continued to increase in popularity over the past decade. However, there are still issues with how much space is required for room-scale VR and experiences are still lacking from haptic feedback. We present LevelEd SR, a substitutional reality level design workflow that combines AR and VR systems and is built for consumer devices. The system enables passive haptics through the inclusion of physical objects from within a space into a virtual world. A validation study (17 participants) has produced quantitative data that suggests players benefit from passive haptics in entertainment VR games with an improved game experience and increased levels of presence. Including objects, such as real-world furniture that is paired with a digital proxy in the virtual world, also opens up more spaces to be used for room-scale VR. We evaluated the workflow and found that participants were accepting of the system, rating it positively using the System Usability Scale questionnaire and would want to use it again to experience substitutional reality.

Virtual reality entertainment and serious games popularity has continued to rise but the processes for level design for VR games has not been adequately researched. Our paper contributes LevelEd VR; a generic runtime virtual reality level editor that supports the level design workflow used by developers and can potentially support user generated content. We evaluated our LevelEd VR application and compared it to an existing workflow of Unity on a desktop. Our current research indicates that users are accepting of such a system, and it has the potential to be preferred over existing workflows for VR level design. We found that the primary benefit of our system is an improved sense of scale and perspective when creating the geometry and implementing gameplay. The paper also contributes some best practices and lessons learned from creating a complex virtual reality tool, such as LevelEd VR.

Digital recreations of historical sites and events are important tools both for academic researchers [6,7] and for public interpretation [7,9]. Current 3D visualization and VR technologies enable these recreations to be increasingly immersive and engaging [10,14]. This poster describes a case study based on a mid-twentieth century Chester dance hall, examining the possibilities and limitations of 3D VR for recreating a public music venue which no longer physically exists, and also for visualizing and analyzing the professional network of musicians who played there, and at many other local venues.