The “overview effect” is an awareness shift experienced by astronauts when they see the Earth from space and realize how fragile it is. This is described as a profound effect leading to more conscious and caring view on our planet. Could we use immersive Virtual Reality (and some other tricks) to give people a glimpse of this experience without having to spend all the money and fossil fuel to send rockets out into space? We’ll post more infos about this project on our Virtual EarthGazing project page soon. Feel free to contact us if you’re interested in collaborating.
here’s a nice overview video of the overall topic (thanks to the planetary collective)
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Just starting our latest project: Virtual Earthgazing - towards an overview effect in Virtual Reality
Here’s a video of Mirjana’s presentation on “Living In A Box: Potentials and Challenges of Existence in VR” from the Consumer Virtual Reality (CVR) show in Vancouver (May 2016). Way to go Mirjana!
For more information on her projects see Pulse Breath Water project page
Here’s a video of my presentation at the 2016 International Psychonomics Conference in Granada about an online spatial orientation study and the rather unexpected response patterns that we observed — and how we might be able to make sense of them.
You can find more infos about this project at this page
Here’s the reference for the talk:
Riecke, B. E., Stepanova, E. R., & Kitson, A. 2016. New response patterns in point-to-origin tasks depending on stimulus type and response mode. Talk presented at the International Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Granada, Spain.
Last year Alex Kitson gave a great presentation at the 2nd International Workshop on Movement and Computing (MoCo) in Vancouver, co-located with ISEA.
here’s at last a recording and the full reference: Kitson, A., Riecke, B. E., & Stepanova, E. R. (2015). (pp. 100–103). Presented at the MOCO’15 – 2nd International Workshop on Movement and Computing, Vancouver, Canada: ACM. doi:10.1145/2790994.2791014
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=279. Enjoy!
Here’s a recording of an invited talk I just gave about some aspects of our theoretical framework on spatial orientation and reference frame conflicts.
The talk was entitled “Qualitative Modeling of Spatial Orientation Processes and Concurrent Reference Frame Conflicts using Logical Propositions” and presented at the International Workshop on Models and Representations in Spatial Cognition at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg in Delmenhorst, Germany from March 3 – 4, 2016
I just presented 2 papers at the 2015 ACM Spatial User Interaction Symposium in LA. Below are references & a simple video recording for those who couldn’t make it down to LA.
Kruijff, E., Riecke, B. E., Trepkowski, C., & Kitson, A. (2015). Upper Body Leaning can affect Forward Self-Motion Perception in Virtual Environments (pp. 103–112). Presented at the SUI ’15: Symposium on Spatial User Interaction, Los Angeles, CA, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/2788940.2788943, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2788943
https://youtu.be/kZUkhI2UI7s
Kitson, A., Riecke, B. E., Hashemian, A. M., & Neustaedter, C. (2015). NaviChair: an embodied interface to navigate virtual reality (pp. 123–126). Presented at the SUI ’15: Symposium on Spatial User Interaction, Los Angeles, CA, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/2788940.2788956, see http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2788940.2788956 for the full paper
On Friday June 26th, the students from the summer 2015 course offering of “immersive environments” course (IAT 445) will be presenting their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from about 10:30am — about 1:30pm.
10 student teams will showcase their own immersive Virtual Reality projects that they developed in the popular game engine Unity3D and will present using the Oculus Rift DK2 head-mounted display.
Some projects draw from contemporary indie/art computer games like Dear Esther, Journey, or 5 nights at Freddy’s and cinema/television. Students were tasked to design for a purposeful and immersive user experience — this semester’s design challenge for students was evoking a strong yet meaningful emotional or visceral response: “Use unity3D and guiding frameworks (e.g., immersion, presence, user-centered systems design etc.) to iteratively ideate, design, prototype, and evaluate an immersive and interactive virtual environment that evokes a strong yet meaningful emotional or visceral response in the users.” So be prepared for some exciting showcases!
Cheers & hope to see you there,
Bernhard
P.S> In case you can’t make it to the interactive project showcase, you can join the public project video presentation session on Friday July 3rd at 10:30am, in Surrey room #2600 (the large theatre), or wait for the best videos to be posted online.
Over the last year we’ve been collaborating with the Vancouver offices of Perkins + Will, and just finished a project video on it (thanks to the great students team from IAT334: Linda Nguyen, Danny Blackstock, Jason Chen, and Justin Poon!).
One guiding question for the project was how to best use immersive Virtual Reality and embodied locomotion interfaces to to design more cost– and space-efficient solutions for effective presentation and communication of architectural designs and ideas. Our overall goal is to iteratively design and evaluate a novel embodied VR system that enables users to quickly, intuitively, and precisely position their virtual viewpoint in 3D space and navigate through the space while freeing up both hands for interaction with the environment and more natural communication using gestures (e.g., with stakeholders and colleagues during a design review session). The video describes our work so far (publications will follow soon hopefully… more info at the project page). Enjoy!
On November 26th, the 9 students in my grad course on “Quantitative Research Methods & Design (IAT802)” that I taught in Fall 2014 gave their final 7-min project presentations in the SIAT research colloquium at Simon Fraser University. Enjoy! I think the students did an amazing job, quite proud of them! — for many it was their first scientific research project and presentation!
On Friday November 28th, the students from the “immersive environments” course (IAT 445) will be presenting their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from about 10:30am — about 1:30pm.
Three teams will showcase their own immersive Virtual Reality projects that they developed in the popular game engine Unity3D and will present using either the Oculus Rift DK2 head-mounted displays or on immersive viewing setups that they designed themselves.
Some projects draw from contemporary indie/art computer games like Dear Esther and Slender Man and cinema/television. Students were tasked to design for a purposeful and immersive user experience — this semester’s design challenge for students was evoking a strong yet meaningful emotional or visceral response: “Use unity3D and guiding frameworks (e.g., immersion, presence, user-centered systems design etc.) to iteratively ideate, design, prototype, and evaluate an immersive and interactive virtual environment that evokes a strong yet meaningful emotional or visceral response in the users.” So be prepared for some exciting showcases!
Cheers
Bernhard
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P.S. In case you can’t make it to the interactive project showcase, you can join the public project video presentation session on Tuesday December 2nd at 4:30pm, in Surrey room #2600 (the large theatre).
We just started our first online spatial orientation experiment — below’s the ad. Enjoy!
Want to help out the Science?! Have 10 minutes to spare in front of your computer? Contribute to the research in spatial orientation in Virtual Reality by taking part in this online experiment studying spatial navigation. The process will involve navigation tasks followed by a number of questionnaires.
We are looking for participants with normal or corrected to normal vision and an access to a laptop or desktop computer (no smart-phones or tablets please!). If you have any questions or concerns please send an e-mail to erstepan@sfu.ca .
Also, participants can enter in draw to win a PRIZE! http://fluidsurveys.com/surveys/siat-survey/virtual-point-to-origin/
On Friday June 20th, the students from the “immersive environments” course (IAT 445) will be presenting their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from about 10:30am — 2:30pm.
10 Teams will showcase their own immersive Virtual Reality projects that they developed in the popular game engine Unity3D and will present on immersive viewing setups that they designed themselves.
This semester’s design challenge for students was relaxation and stress-reduction: “Use unity3D and guiding frameworks to iteratively ideate, design, prototype, and evaluate an immersive project that helps to relax and de-stress it’s users (incl. students like yourselves or SFU faculty/staff).” So be prepared for some exciting (and maybe even relaxing?) showcases!
Cheers
Bernhard
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In case you can’t make it to the interactive project showcase on the Mezzanine on Friday, you can still join the public project video presentation session on Tuesday June 24th, in Surrey room #2600 (the large theatre).
Last year Daniel & Lonnie successfully defended their MSc thesis, congratulations! Here are the videos of their thesis presentations, enjoy (and thanks Daniel for the video editing)!
Lonnie B. Hastings (2013, December). The Influence of Shading, Display Size and Individual Differences on Navigation Performance in Virtual Reality in an Applied Industry Setting (MSc Thesis). Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada. Retrieved from https://theses.lib.sfu.ca/thesis/etd8120
Daniel Feuereissen. (2013, August). Self-motion illusions (vection) in Virtual Environments: Do active control and user– generated motion cueing enhance visually induced vection? (MSc Thesis). Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada. Retrieved from https://theses.lib.sfu.ca/thesis/etd7976
Here’s a simple video of the talk I had the honour to give at the 2013 Psychonomics Conference in beautiful Toronto, Canada for those who couldn’t make it.
Riecke, B. E., & Sigurdarson, S. (2013). Simple Modifications of Visuals can Enhance Spatial Orientation Ability in Virtual Environments, Whereas Adding Physical Rotations May Not. Talk presented at the 54th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society (Psychonomics), Toronto, Canada. (http://iSpaceLab.com/publications/)
Here’s a simple video of the invited talk I had the honour to give at the 2013 International Toronto Stereoscopic Film Conference last fall, for those who couldn’t make it. It was entitled “Creating a moving experience without moving the observer: Perceptual aspects & display factors in immersive Virtual Reality”.
Interested in contributing to innovative research at the intersection of Psychology/Cognitive Science, Informatics, Human Factors/HCI, and Virtual Reality in an interdisciplinary team? I’m currently looking for bright and motivated PhD/MSc students to join the iSpace lab at the School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT), Simon Fraser University in the greater Vancouver region in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.
Please please carefully read http://ispace.iat.sfu.ca/contact/ to assess how you might fit in, and check SIAT’s grad admission procedures and contact me before submitting your application. Off-cycle admission is possible for excellent candidates. I look forward to hearing from you! Bernhard
Earlier this Fall Steve Palmisano and I had the honor to be invited to present our vection research at the vection symposium in Fukuoka, Japan, organized by Takeharu Seno. Lots of inspiring conversations (and incredible Japanese hospitality and food). Hope to find some time to edit the presentation video and upload it soon…
Recently, all 14 SIAT graduate course in my grad course on “Quantitative Research Methods & Design (IAT802)” that I taught in Fall 2013 gave their final 6-min project presentation publicly in the SIAT research colloquium. Enjoy! I think the students did an amazing job — for many it was their first scientific research project and presentation!
Here are the presenters & talk titles:
Carolyn Pang Evaluating the Usability of Desktop and Mobile Government Portals
Mirjana Prpa Can an immersive display enhance the experience of self-motion illusions in VR?
Sujoy Hajra Evaluating EEG based measures for language therapy assessment in stroke patients
Xiaolan Wang Does previous contact with funding organizations affect the money community gardens get?
Emily C Color’s effect on learning symbol-sound relationships
Ankit Gupta Can semantically labeled graphs help you find information faster?
Xiao Zhang Progressive or regressive visual interface design: comparing user experience supported by iOS 7 versus iOS 6
Ethan Soutar-Rau It all started with a Penguin
Reese Muntean Effects of Gender on Beer Preference
Sohail.Md Melodic comparison in META-MELO system
Xin Tong Comparison between two kinds of Virtual Reality display: the Oculus Rift HMD & the Firsthand display
Sanam Shirazi Can we predict students’ academic performance from engagement in online learning activities?
Srecko Joksimovic The level of social presence in online learning community as a predictor of students’ academic performance
Jacqueline Jordan Does vection intensity differ between Virtual Reality displays?
On Thursday Nov 28, the students from the “immersive environments” course (IAT 445) will be presenting their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from about 2:30 — 6:30pm.
10 Teams will showcase their own immersive Virtual Reality projects that they developed in the popular game engine Unity3D and will present on immersive viewing setups that they build themselves. Be prepared for some exciting showcases!
On April 4 & 5th (Thursday/Friday), the students from the “immersive environments” course (IAT 445) will be presenting their final projects in the Mezzanine on our SFU Surrey campus, from about noon — 2:30pm.
9 Teams will showcase their own immersive Virtual Reality projects that they developed in the popular game engine Unity3D and will present on immersive viewing setups that they build themselves (ranging form mobile phones with stereoscopic viewers to larger displays with viewing boxes). Be prepared for some exciting showcases!
Cheers, Bernhard
Below are some first impressions of the showcase — thanks to all the students for their great contributions! Note that most of them had never before developed in Unity3D.
The IEEE VR/3DUI 2013 Conference was held in beautiful Orlando, Florida in mid-March and featured poster presentations from two iSpace Lab members.
Paving the way into virtual reality — a transition in five stages
Daniel Sproll and Jacob Freiberg revealed their poster and abstract at IEEE 3DUI. They present a framework for improving immersion in Virtual Reality through use of an exciting and self initiated transition from the real world into the virtual environment. For more information take a look at theposter and the two page abstract.
Do walking motions enhance visually induced self-motion illusions in virtual reality?
Jacob Freiberg presented an experimental investigation of the relationship between biomechanically induced self motion illusions and visually induced self motion illusions. He was nominated for best poster award at IEEE VR. The poster and the two page abstract can be viewed here.
Interested in contributing to exciting research at the intersection of Informatics, Psychology/Cognitive Science, Human Factors/HCI, and Virtual Reality in an interdisciplinary multi-national team? We’re currently looking for bright and motivated PhD/MSc students to join the iSpace lab at the School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT), Simon Fraser University in the greater Vancouver region in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.
Please please carefully read http://ispace.iat.sfu.ca/contact/ to assess who you might fit in, and check SIAT’s grad admission procedures and contact me before submitting your application. Off-cycle admission is possible for excellent candidates. I look forward to hearing from you! Bernhard
This passed week I successfully defended my Master’s thesis about Sonic Cradle and Immersion. Thanks to SIAT, NSERC, GRAND and my advisory committee: Dr. Bernhard Riecke, Dr. Diane Gromala, Dr. Carman Neustaedter, & Dr. Halil Erhan.
Special thanks to Jim Silvester for helping out with this video of the presentation I gave at the thesis defense :
For the first time, students from the SIAT graduate course on “Quantitative Research Methods & Design (IAT802)” that I taught in Fall 2012 at SIAT gave their final 6-min project presentation publicly in the SIAT research colloquium. Enjoy! I think the students did a wonderful job — for many it was their first scientific research project and presentation!
At this year’s spatial cognition conference in Kloster Seeon in Bavaria, Germany, Bernhard co-organized a workshop on “VR in Spatial Cognition Research” with Klaus Gramann.
He also also presented a paper on “Why the heck do we have not clue where we are in VR?” — below is the video of it. (after 10min the camera died, so you’ll have to look at the paper for final conclusions, here’s the reference, official paper title & link:
Riecke, B. E. (2012). Are Left-Right Hemisphere Errors in Point-to-Origin Tasks in VR Caused by Failure to Incorporate Heading Changes? In C. Stachniss, K. Schill, & D. Uttal (Eds.), Spatial Cognition 2012 (Vol. 7463, pp. 143–162). Springer Berlin / Heidelberg. (Download)