This paper summarizes our NSF funded project, a PC-based multi-user learning environment: Multi-User Virtual Environment Experiential Simulator (MUVEES). The goal of this project is to create and evaluate graphical multi-user virtual environments that use digitized museum resources to enhance middle school students' motivation and learning about science. Here, we discuss the design, implementation, and applications of MUVEES. We present its structure, efficient approaches that achieve more realistic avatar behaviors, and pedagogical strategies that foster strong learning outcomes across a wide range of individual student characteristics. Our preliminary results indicate that MUVEES is a powerful vehicle for collaboration and learning. We believe that our system and implementation methods will help improve future multi-user virtual environments.

Effectively controlling a robot remotely, teleoperation, offers benefits in improving human safety, reducing workload, providing location accessibility, and achieving convenient operation. In previous work, teleoperator task performance has been shown to improve with the addition of force feedback. Here we report on a system providing a human operator with a six-axis kinesthetic and visual force display, its implementation and experimental evaluation. A system design containing both a six-axis force reflective hand controller and a stereo video head-mounted display with 3D force display overlay is presented. The system was utilized to evaluate the effects of force display augmentation and substitution by controlling a dexterous anthropomorphic robot called "Robonaut" in the performance of a typical space teleoperation drill task. The human test subject performance under four different force feedback scenarios, no force display, visual force display, kinesthetic force display and bisensory force display, is measured. Experimental results indicate a noticeably lower cumulative force, torque, and variance, lower peak force/torque, yet unchanged task completion times under the presence of visual or kinesthetic force display.

Interaction with medical volume data has often been difficult, due to the large memory and computational power required. By taking advantage of current high-end graphics hardware, we have developed a volumetric virtual environment that provides the ability to help people interact with the volumetric Visible Human data set. The application enables the user to explore the interior of a virtual human body in a natural and intuitive way.

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has had a growing impact on business in the oil and gas industry. In 1997, there were only two VR visualization centers in the oil and gas industry, but now there are more than 20 visualization centers using VR technology. However most VR software systems in use are customized to perform specific tasks, and though some positive results have been reported, no systematic evaluation has been performed to quantify the benefits of using VR to interact with geoscience data. Therefore, we designed and implemented a VR application for the geosciences and then invited geoscientists and software developers to evaluate this application. The results show that VR provides a significantly enhanced visualization environment. Our results also suggest that the major challenge to the successful implementation of VR involves the improvement of VR interaction techniques.

In this paper, we describe a user interface technique that uses a bounding box as a m taphor to facilitate interaction in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment. Because this technique is based on the observation that some of the VR application fields are contained in a closed world, we call it Closed World Interaction (CWI). After the user defines a closed world, the necessar virtual buttons are shown around the closed world which is presented by a frame. These virtual buttons are then used to interact with models. We also integrate some of the 2D Windows, Icons, Mouse and Pointer (WIMP) metaphors into CWI technique, reflecting our belief that users will be able to adapt to this environment quickly, A series of user studies were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of this technique. The results indicate that users can define a closed world quickly. Experience appears to be an important factor, and users can be trained to become familiar with CWI in the VR environment. The constrained interactions can also enhance the accuracy of selection. Two-handed manipulation somewhat improves the speed.

This paper describes a research study that investigated how designers can use frames of reference (egocentric, exocentric, and a combination of the two) to support the mastery of abstract multidimensional information. The primary focus of this study was the relationship between FORs and mastery; the secondary focus was on other factors (individual characteristics and interaction experience) that were likely to influence the relationship between FORs and mastery. This studys outcomes (1) clarify how FORs work in conjunction with other factors in shaping mastery, (2) highlight strengths and weaknesses of different FORs, (3) demonstrate the benefits of providing multiple FORs, and (4) provide the basis for our recommendations to HCI researchers and designers.

Article Free Access Share on Application of virtual reality in the interpretation of geoscience data Authors: Ching-Rong Lin Virtual Environment Technology Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Houston Virtual Environment Technology Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of HoustonView Profile , R. Bowen Loftin Virtual Environment Technology Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Houston Virtual Environment Technology Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of HoustonView Profile Authors Info & Claims VRST '98: Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technologyNovember 1998 Pages 187–194https://doi.org/10.1145/293701.293736Published:02 November 1998Publication History 12citation869DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations12Total Downloads869Last 12 Months78Last 6 weeks7 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

Article Free Access Share on Experiences with virtual reality applications (panel) Authors: William R. Sherman The National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing ApplicationsView Profile , Nina Adams Adams Consulting Group Adams Consulting GroupView Profile , Rita Addison View Profile , R. Bowen Loftin University of Houston and NASA/Johnson Space Center University of Houston and NASA/Johnson Space CenterView Profile , Ben Britton University of Cincinnati University of CincinnatiView Profile , Donna Cox The National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing ApplicationsView Profile , Robert Patterson The National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing ApplicationsView Profile Authors Info & Claims SIGGRAPH '97: Proceedings of the 24th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniquesAugust 1997 Pages 473–476https://doi.org/10.1145/258734.258913Online:03 August 1997Publication History 0citation535DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads535Last 12 Months4Last 6 weeks1 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF