Awedyssey: VR for pro­mo­ting and enhancing well-being

We are inves­ti­gat­ing and cre­at­ing a new vir­tual real­ity (VR) expe­ri­ence, ‘Awedyssey’, for the pro­mo­tion and enhance­ment of well-being. Today, dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy per­va­sively inter­sects with our daily lives, and VR stands out as a dig­i­tal tool capa­ble of fos­ter­ing adap­tive coping and resilience skills, and authen­tic social con­nec­tion. We wel­come queries from poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors and mem­bers of…

VR Sickness Benchmark System

Tackling VR Sickness: A Novel Benchmark System for Assessing Contributing Factors and Mitigation Strategies through Rapid VR Sickness Induction and Recovery Abstract This research intro­duces a novel VR sick­ness bench­mark system, designed to address the lack of stan­dard­ized tools for assess­ing and mit­i­gat­ing VR sick­ness. It aims to rec­tify the incon­sis­ten­cies and lim­i­ta­tions prev…

Multisensory Contributions Illusory Self-Motion (Vection)

Beyond the Eye: Multisensory Contributions to the Sensation of Illusory Self-Motion (Vection) Abstract Vection is typ­i­cally defined as the embod­ied illu­sion of self-motion in the absence of real phys­i­cal move­ment through space. Vection can occur in real-life sit­u­a­tions (e.g., ‘train illu­sion’) and in vir­tual envi­ron­ments and sim­u­la­tors. The vast major­ity of vec­tion research focuses on vectio…

Designing with Biosignals Workshop at ACM DIS 2023

Designing with Biosignals: Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Directions for Integrating Physiological Signals in Human-Computer Interaction ABSTRACT Biosensing tech­nolo­gies are a rapidly increas­ing pres­ence in our daily lives. These sensor-based tech­nolo­gies mea­sure phys­i­o­log­i­cal processes includ­ing heart rate, breath­ing, skin con­duc­tance, brain activ­ity and more. Researchers are exploring…

ETC - Embodied Telepresent Connection

Embodied Telepresent Connection (ETC): Exploring Virtual Social Touch Through Pseudohaptics ETC (Embodied Telepresent Connection) is an artis­tic VR project explor­ing ways of elic­it­ing a feel­ing of embod­ied con­nec­tion telep­resently through pseudo­hap­tics. This project emerged during the begin­ning of COVID-19-related lock­downs when our social inter­ac­tions began to inhabit nearly exclu­sively virtual …

Synedelica

Reality — Reimagined Synedelica reimag­ines what is pos­si­ble with immer­sive tech­nol­ogy, pro­vid­ing a new per­spec­tive on real­ity. In this synes­thetic mixed real­ity expe­ri­ence, visu­als of the real world are mod­u­lated by sound, attun­ing imm­er­sants to the beauty hidden in the seem­ingly mun­dane. Synedelica shows the world in a new light, rekin­dling child­like wonder and encour­ag­ing exploration. …

Autoethnographic Close Reading of Self-transcendent VR Experiences

Sipping the Virtual Elixir: An autoethno­graphic close read­ing of Ayahuasca Kosmik Journey a self-transcendent vir­tual expe­ri­ence. Recently self-transcendent expe­ri­ences are gain­ing inter­est in the research com­mu­nity because of their abil­ity to sup­port well­be­ing. Experiences of self-transcendence can be trans­for­ma­tive, lead­ing to a dimin­ish­ment of self/ego and the feel­ing of unity with n…

Novel Cybersickness Measures and Countermeasures BoF

Novel Cybersickness Measures and Countermeasures:  Birds of a Feather ses­sion at SIGGRAPH 2022   Interested in con­nect­ing & join­ing? If you’re inter­ested in con­nect­ing to others engaged or inter­ested in the Novel Cybersickness Measures and Countermeasures, you could join our online inter­ac­tive Birds of a Feather ses­sion at Siggraph 2022, on Fri Aug 05, 10 am-11:30 am Log in through h…

HyperJump flying to combat motion sickness

HyperJumping in Virtual Vancouver: Combating Motion Sickness by Merging Teleporting and Continuous VR Locomotion in an Embodied Hands-Free VR Flying Paradigm Motion sick­ness, unin­tu­itive nav­i­ga­tion, and lim­ited agency are crit­i­cal issues in VR/XR imped­ing wide-spread adop­tion and enjoy­able user expe­ri­ences. To tackle these chal­lenges, we present HyperJump, a novel VR inter­face merg­ing advantages …

Concurrent locomotion and interaction in VR

Can more embod­ied and leaning-based inter­faces help sup­port con­cur­rent loco­mo­tion and inter­ac­tion in VR when phys­i­cal walk­ing isn’t fea­si­ble? Physical walk­ing is often con­sid­ered the gold stan­dard for VR travel when­ever fea­si­ble. However, espe­cially for larger-scale vir­tual travel the free-space walk­ing areas are typ­i­cally too small, thus requir­ing hand­held con­trollers to nav­i­gate, which …

Star-Stuff: a way for the universe to know itself

Available on Oculus AppLab at https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3367089710082568/ Inspired by Carl Sagan, Star-Stuff: a way for the uni­verse to know itself is an immer­sive expe­ri­ence cre­ated to remind imm­er­sants of their fun­da­men­tal con­nec­tion to human­ity and the Universe. This hybrid VR art­work brings two people together remotely or in a co-present instal­la­tion. In both cases, the …

SIRIUS - Virtual Earthgazing to mitigate effects of sensory isolation

SIRIUS (Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station) is a series of on-land iso­la­tion exper­i­ments mod­el­ling long-term space­flight in order to assess the psy­chophys­i­o­log­i­cal effects of iso­la­tion on a crew and pre­pare for long-duration space­flights, such as a trip to Mars. An 8-month-long iso­la­tion study com­menced in Moscow on Nov 4^th, 2021, where a crew of 6 people (from Roscosm…

Leaning-based interfaces improve ground-based VR locomotion

Hand-held VR con­trollers are widely avail­able and used, how­ever they can con­tribute to unwanted side-effects, such as increased cyber­sick­ness, dis­ori­en­ta­tion, and cog­ni­tive load. Here, we show how a leaning-based inter­faces (“HeadJoystick”) can help improve user expe­ri­ence, usability,and per­for­mance in diverse ground-based nav­i­ga­tion includ­ing three com­ple­men­tary tasks: reach-the-target, follow-th…

Virtual Transcendent Dream

Flying dreams have the poten­tial to evoke a feel­ing of empow­er­ment (or self-efficacy, con­fi­dence in our abil­ity to suc­ceed) and self-transcendent expe­ri­ence (STE), which have been shown to con­tribute to an individual’s over­all well-being. However, these excep­tional dream­ing expe­ri­ences remain dif­fi­cult to induce at will. Inspired by the poten­tial of Virtual Reality (VR) to sup­port pro­found emoti…

Integrating Continuous and Teleporting VR Locomotion into a Seamless "HyperJump" Paradigm

Here we pro­pose a hybrid inter­face that allows user to seam­lessly tran­si­tion between a slow ‘con­tin­u­ous’ mode and a fast ‘hyper­jump’ mode. The inter­face aims to main­tain the immer­sion, pres­ence, accu­racy and spa­tial updat­ing of con­tin­u­ous loco­mo­tion while adding the travel effi­ciency and min­i­miz­ing the cyber­sick­ness. Continuous loco­mo­tion in VR pro­vides unin­ter­rupted opti­cal flow, which mimics re…

Body RemiXer

Extending Bodies to Stimulate Social Connection in an Immersive Installation Body RemiXer con­nects bodies through move­ment. It is an expe­ri­en­tial pro­jec­tion based Virtual Reality instal­la­tion that explores novel forms of embod­ied inter­ac­tion between mul­ti­ple par­tic­i­pants where their bodies mix into a shared embod­ied rep­re­sen­ta­tion pro­duc­ing a play­ful inter­ac­tion that aims to sup­port the feel­ing o…

Lucid Loop: A Virtual Deep Learning Biofeedback System for Lucid Dreaming Practice

Can VR and neu­ro­feed­back deep learn­ing art help enhance atten­tion and lucid dream­ing prac­tice? Lucid dream­ing, know­ing one is dream­ing while dream­ing, is an impor­tant tool for explor­ing con­scious­ness and bring­ing aware­ness to dif­fer­ent aspects of life. We cre­ated a system called Lucid Loop: a vir­tual real­ity expe­ri­ence where one can prac­tice lucid aware­ness via neu­ro­feed­back. Visuals are creativ…

Connecting through JeL – bio-responsive VR for interpersonal synchronization

Can a bio-responsive gen­er­a­tive art instal­la­tion foster inter­per­sonal syn­chro­niza­tion and con­nec­tion? JeL is a bio-responsive, immer­sive, inter­ac­tive, gen­er­a­tive art instal­la­tion designed to encour­age phys­i­o­log­i­cal syn­chro­niza­tion between the imm­er­sants. In this project, we will be explor­ing how novel forms of inter­ac­tion can be included in immer­sive tech­nol­ogy to foster the feel­ing of connection…

Embodied & Intuitive Flying for VR, Gaming, and TeleOperation

Flying has been a dream for mankind for mil­lenia — but flying inter­faces for VR, gaming, and tele­op­er­a­tion (e.g., drones) typ­i­cally rely on cum­ber­some double-joystick/gamepads and do not allow for intu­itive and embod­ied flying expe­ri­ences. Here, we develop low-cost embod­ied flying inter­faces that adapt leaning-based motion cueing par­a­digms thus free­ing up hands for addi­tional tasks beyond just na…

Gamified Research

Gamifying Research — Researchifying Games While tra­di­tional exper­i­men­tal par­a­digms offer tight stim­u­lus con­trol and repeata­bil­ity, then tend to be a bit boring and removed from many real-world sit­u­a­tions, which can limit real-world trans­fer­abil­ity of results. How can we bring together the method­olog­i­cal strenghs of research with the intrin­sic moti­va­tion of play­ful­ness and gaming? The …

Lean and Elegant Motion Cueing in VR

How do we best design loco­mo­tion inter­faces for VR that pro­vide “enough” phys­i­cal motion cues (vestibular/proprioceptive) while still being effec­tive, afford­able, com­pact, and safe? Despite amaz­ing progress in com­puter graph­ics and VR dis­plays, most afford­able and room-sized VR loco­mo­tion inter­faces pro­vide only little phys­i­cal motion cues (e.g., vestibu­lar & pro­pri­o­cep­tive cues). To provide…

Embodied Self-Motion Illusions in VR

How can we pro­vide humans with a believ­able sen­sa­tion of being in and moving through computer-generated envi­ron­ments (like VR, com­puter games, or movies) with­out the need for costly and cum­ber­some motion plat­forms or large free-space walk­ing areas? That is, how can we “cheat intel­li­gently” by pro­vid­ing a com­pelling, embod­ied self-motion illu­sion (“vec­tion”) with­out the need for full phys­i­cal mo…

InExChange

InExChange: Fostering Genuine Social Connection through Embodied Breath Sharing in Mixed Reality InExChange is an inter­ac­tive mixed real­ity expe­ri­ence cen­ter­ing around an inflat­able vest which con­veys a phys­i­cal sense of shared breath­ing on the diaphragm between two or more par­tic­i­pants. The expe­ri­ence is com­posed of three acts in which the par­tic­i­pants’ breaths are trans­formed into metapho…

Virtual Earthgazing

During months-long mis­sions, Astronauts expe­ri­ence var­i­ous aspects of social iso­la­tion and con­fine­ment. Our main aim is to study the fea­si­bil­ity of a vir­tual real­ity sen­sory stim­u­la­tion aug­men­ta­tion called Virtual Earthgazing (VE). The VE expe­ri­ence is designed to elicit an “overview effect” of the Earth and induce the feel­ing of awe, which has been shown to expand time per­cep­tion, increase e…

Flow

Flow is a pro­to­type of a real-time inter­ac­tive instal­la­tion with Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) tech­nol­ogy, aimed at evok­ing social con­nec­tion through bio-signal shar­ing. The Muse™ head­band would stream user’s EEG (brain wave) data and PPG (breath­ing) data into Unity 3D engine using LSL (Lab Streaming Layer). The gen­er­ated visu­al­iza­tion inter­act subtly with the participant’s breath­ing pattern…

BioSpaceVR

Experience space like never before: An awe-inspiring VR expe­ri­ence that takes place in space where the Sun and stars react to biosen­sors. BioSpaceVR seeks to pro­vide a vir­tual self-transcendent expe­ri­ence. Self-transcendent expe­ri­ences are char­ac­ter­ized by the feel­ing of unity with others and the world. Our project is a bio-responsive VR expe­ri­ence that cre­ates an almost child­like expe­ri­ence of …

Immersive Installation for Creative Expression and Public Performance: Transcending Perception

  Artist Statement Transcending Perception is an inter­ac­tive Virtual Reality (VR) instal­la­tion devel­oped by John Desnoyers-Stewart that allows par­tic­i­pants to col­lab­o­rate in the cre­ative, impro­vi­sa­tional pro­duc­tion of mul­ti­sen­sory expe­ri­ences. Bodies and space are trans­formed into instru­ments which trans­late pres­ence into per­for­mance. This instal­la­tion reminds par­tic­i­pants that they are cre…

Navigation Interface Tutorial

Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice First ver­sion held at IEEE VR 2017, Sunday, March 19, 1:30pm — 5:00pm, updated vari­ants of the tuto­r­ial will be pre­sented at ACM Chi 2018 (slides) and IEEE VR 2018. At The Spatial Cognition 2018 con­fer­ence we will present a new tuto­r­ial on Spatial Navigation Interfaces for Immersive Environments focus­ing more on the…

Navigational Search in VR: Do Reference Frames Help?

Would the rec­tan­gu­lar ref­er­ence frame of a CAVE help to reduce dis­ori­en­ta­tion and improve nav­i­ga­tion per­for­mance in VR? Here, we show that simply pro­vid­ing the rec­tan­gu­lar ref­er­ence frame of a room (as a simple wire­frame cuboid), but not a CAVE improved nav­i­ga­tional search per­for­mance.   Despite recent advances in vir­tual real­ity, loco­mo­tion in a vir­tual envi­ron­ment is still restricted becau…

Pulse Breath Water

Pulse Breath Water is an immer­sive vir­tual envi­ron­ment manip­u­lated by the pulse of a participant’s breath that pro­vokes and chal­lenges the inter­ac­tion between a user and the sub­stan­tial ele­ment of the envi­ron­ment: water. The system “senses” the par­tic­i­pant, while the participant’s breath­ing feeds the system. The process is a sym­bi­otic play between inter­nal human processes [biosens­ing t…

Immersive & Embodied Teleoperation Interfaces

Developing vir­tual inter­faces for embod­ied tele-operation and loco­mo­tion. How can we best design and imple­ment an embod­ied telep­res­ence system for tele-robotics, so we can safely explore remote, hard-to-reach, or poten­tially haz­ardous areas or sit­u­a­tions? The goal of the “TeleSpider” project is to design and imple­ment a telep­res­ence system where users can remotely oper­ate a robotic spid…

state.scape: EEG-based Responsive Art Installation

Biofeedback in VR - SOLAR

Resonance in Virtual Environments: hack­ing biofeed­back for alter­ing user’s affec­tive states How can we com­bine immer­sive vir­tual envi­ron­ments (VE) with biofeed­back and gam­i­fi­ca­tion to foster relax­ation, de-stressing and med­i­ta­tive states? That is, instead of increas­ing sen­sory over­load, can we use the immer­sive and affec­tive poten­tial of VE and gam­i­fi­ca­tion to assist espe­cially novice meditato…

Motion Seats for VR

Using motion seats for enhanc­ing loco­mo­tion and immer­sion in VR How can we pro­vide a “moving expe­ri­ence” through VR with­out having to use a full-scale motion plat­form? Could a com­pact and rel­a­tively low-cost “motion seat” pro­vide some of the same ben­e­fits, thus reduc­ing cost, com­plex­ity, space & safety require­ments? Despite con­sid­er­able advances in Simulation and Virtual Real…

VR in Architecture Design & Review

How can we 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…

Cross-Disciplinary 'Immersion' Framework

Describing media as ‘immer­sive’ is ambigu­ous.  From debil­i­tat­ing addic­tion to ther­a­peu­tic relief, media engage­ment holds a clear dual­ity in its effect on human­ity… Without an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of “immer­sion”, why do we allow this con­cept to be so read­ily invoked in dis­cus­sions of books, visual art, video games, vir­tual real­ity sys­tems and more? While “immer­sion” into tradit…

The Tabletop Makerspace

The table­top Makerspace was a Mitacs intern­ship project con­ducted in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Science World. A set of class­room tools was devel­oped to sup­port ‘Maker’ activ­i­ties at the museum. The tools included a home-built 3D printer and a set of elec­tron­ics kits for work­ing with the Arduino micro­con­troller. An intro­duc­tion to elec­tron­ics work­shop was devel­oped with local makers and Science World …

Gyroxus Gaming Chair for Motion Cueing in VR

Can self-motion per­cep­tion in vir­tual real­ity (VR) be enhanced by pro­vid­ing afford­able, user-powered min­i­mal motion cueing? Introduction & Motivation:  Can self-motion per­cep­tion in vir­tual real­ity (VR) be enhanced by pro­vid­ing afford­able, user-powered min­i­mal motion cueing? To inves­ti­gate this, we com­pared the effect of dif­fer­ent inter­ac­tion and motion par­a­digms on onset latency and intensi…

Navigational Search in VR: Do we need to walk?

Do we need full phys­i­cal motions for effec­tive nav­i­ga­tion through Virtual Environments? Recent results sug­gest that trans­la­tions might not be as impor­tant as pre­vi­ously believed, which could enable us to reduce over­all sim­u­la­tion effort and cost Physical rota­tions and trans­la­tions are the basic con­stituents of nav­i­ga­tion behav­ior, yet there is mixed evi­dence about their rel­a­tive impor­tance for co…

Spatial Cognition in VR vs. real world

Comparing spa­tial perception/cognition in real versus immer­sive vir­tual envi­ron­ments: it doesn’t com­pare! Virtual real­ity (VR) is increas­ingly used in psy­cho­log­i­cal research and appli­ca­tions – but does VR really afford nat­ural human spa­tial perception/cognition, which is a pre­req­ui­site for effec­tive spa­tial behav­ior? Using judg­ment of rel­a­tive direc­tion (JRD) tasks, Riecke & McNamara (Psychonom…

iSpaceMecha

Collaboration between the iSpace lab at SIAT and Mechatronics Undergraduate Interns to design and build a unique, vir­tual real­ity multi-modal motion sim­u­la­tor The iSpace pro­gram is cen­tered on inves­ti­gat­ing what con­sti­tutes effec­tive, robust, and intu­itive human spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion and behav­iour. This fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge will be applied to design novel, more effec­tive human-computer interfaces …

Sympathetic Guitar

Do humans response socially to abstract, expres­sive human-computer inter­faces? To inter­act with the Sympathetic Guitar is to use a famil­iar and com­fort­able Western musi­cal inter­face to feel an instant con­nec­tion to musi­cal cul­ture and style of the East.  The pro­to­type senses gui­tarists’ hand motions and per­for­mance dynam­ics to aug­ment a stan­dard clas­si­cal guitar with a dig­i­tal drone…

Spatial Updating With(out) Physical Motions?

How impor­tant are phys­i­cal motions for effec­tive spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in VR? Most vir­tual real­ity sim­u­la­tors have a  seri­ous flaw: Users tend to get easily lost and dis­ori­ented as they nav­i­gate. According to the pre­vail­ing opin­ion, this is because phys­i­cal motion cues are absolutely required for stay­ing ori­ented while moving. In this study, we inves­ti­gated how phys­i­cal motion cues contribute …

Sonic Cradle

Sonic Cradle sus­pends the body is a com­pletely dark cham­ber which encour­ages expe­ri­ences com­pa­ra­ble to mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion.  Users com­pose peace­ful sound­scapes in real-time using only their breath­ing. Introduction and demo of the Sonic Cradle Sonic Cradle is a relax­ing human-computer inter­ac­tion par­a­digm designed to foster med­i­ta­tive atten­tional pat­terns.  The cur­rent p…