Virtual reality (VR) has been successfully applied to a broad range of training domains; however, to date there is little research investigating its benefits for sport training. In this work we investigated the feasibility and usefulness of using VR for two sport subdomains: sport psychology and sport biomechanics. In terms of sport psychology training, high-fidelity VR systems could be used to display realistic 3D environments to induce anxiety, allowing resilience-training systems to prepare athletes for real-world, high-pressure situations. For sport biomechanical training, we could take advantage of the 3D tracking available in VR systems to capture and display full-body movements in real-time, and could design flexible 3D environments to foster a valuable and engaging training experience. To address using VR for sport psychology training, in this work we present a case study and a controlled experiment. Our work addresses whether a VR system can induce anxiety in participants, and if so, how this anxiety impacts performance, and what the implications are for VR system design. sing VR for sport biomechanical training, in this work we present a case study describing the development of a VR-based jump training application. Our work addresses whether an effective VR biomechanical training system can be achieved using standard computer equipment and commodity tracking devices, and how we should design the user experience of a VR sport training system to effectively deliver biomechanical principles. / Master of Science

Guiding navigation in virtual environments (VEs) is a challenging task. A key issue in the navigation of a virtual environment is to be able to strike a balance between the user's need to explore the environment freely and the designer's need to ensure that the user experiences all the important events in the VE. This thesis reports on a study aimed at comparing the effectiveness of various navigation cues that are used to motivate users towards a specific target location. The results of this study indicate some significant differences in how users responded to the various cues.

Nya teknologier utvecklas hela tiden och ett fåtal av dessa har möjligheten att revolutionera tillvägagångssättet av hur vi gör saker. Utbildningsområdet är ett av de äldsta områdena som finns kvar även idag och som återkommande har dragit nytta av ny teknologi för att förbättra kärnkonceptet.Vår forskning täcker fenomenet virtual reality som ett supplement i utbildningen. Vi undersöker hur studenter vid Högskolan i Borås uppfattar introduceringen av denna moderna teknologi som ett hjälpmedel till deras studier. Vi använder oss utav enkäter för att samla in information, och vi fick svar från 143 studenter. Vår slutats anser att den övergripande attityden är positiv hos studenterna, samtidigt som vi behåller en viss skepticism för att detta resultat ska ligga till grund som fakta för framtida beslutstaganden. / There is a constant development of new technologies happening in the world. A handful of these are deemed to have the potential of truly revolutionizing the way we do things. The field of education is one of the oldest fields that continue to be present even today and has time and time again come to make use of new technologies that streamlines and improves upon its core concept.The research we put forward covers the case of virtual reality as an improvement into the field of education. We research how students at the University of Borås perceive the introduction of this novel technology as an aid in their studies. We utilize questionnaires in order to receive this information and received a total of 143 respondents’ answers. We conclude that the general attitude of the students is positive, while maintaining skepticism in terms of this result as a piece of document for proving the results as facts.

One of the most fundamental components of our daily lives is social interaction, ranging from simple activities, such as purchasing a donut in a bakery on the way to work, to complex ones, such as instructing a remote colleague how to repair a broken automobile. While we interact with others, various challenges may arise, such as miscommunication or physical interference. In a bakery, a clerk may misunderstand the donut at which a customer was pointing due to the uncertainty of their finger direction. In a repair task, a technician may remove the wrong bolt and accidentally hit another user while replacing broken parts due to unclear instructions and lack of attention while communicating with a remote advisor. This dissertation explores techniques for supporting multi-user 3D interaction in augmented reality in a way that addresses these challenges. Augmented Reality (AR) refers to interactively overlaying geometrically registered virtual media on the real world. In particular, we address how an AR system can use overlaid graphics to assist users in referencing local objects accurately and remote objects efficiently, and prevent co-located users from physically interfering with each other. My thesis is that our techniques can provide more accurate referencing for co-located and efficient referencing for remote users and lessen interference among users. First, we present and evaluate an AR referencing technique for shared environments that is designed to improve the accuracy with which one user (the indicator) can point out a real physical object to another user (the recipient). Our technique is intended for use in otherwise unmodeled environments in which objects in the environment, and the hand of the indicator, are interactively observed by a depth camera, and both users wear tracked see-through displays. This technique allows the indicator to bring a copy of a portion of the physical environment closer and indicate a selection in the copy. At the same time, the recipient gets to see the indicator's live interaction represented virtually in another copy that is brought closer to the recipient, and is also shown the mapping between their copy and the actual portion of the physical environment. A formal user study confirms that our technique performs significantly more accurately than comparison techniques in situations in which the participating users have sufficiently different views of the scene. Second, we extend the idea of using a copy (virtual replica) of physical object to help a remote expert assist a local user in performing a task in the local user's environment. We develop an approach that uses Virtual Reality (VR) or AR for the remote expert, and AR for the local user. It allows the expert to create and manipulate virtual replicas of physical objects in the local environment to refer to parts of those physical objects and to indicate actions on them. The expert demonstrates actions in 3D by manipulating virtual replicas, supported by constraints and annotations. We performed a user study of a 6DOF alignment task, a key operation in many physical task domains. We compared our approach with another 3D approach that also uses virtual replicas, in which the remote expert identifies corresponding pairs of points to align on a pair of objects, and a 2D approach in which the expert uses a 2D tablet-based drawing system similar to sketching systems developed for prior work by others on remote assistance. The study shows the 3D demonstration approach to be faster than the others. Third, we present an interference avoidance technique (Redirected Motion) intended to lessen the chance of physical interference among users with tracked hand-held displays, while minimizing their awareness that the technique is being applied. This interaction technique warps virtual space by shifting the virtual location of a user's hand-held display. We conducted a formal user study to evaluate Redirected Motion against other approaches that either modify what a user sees or hears, or restrict the interaction capabilities users have. Our study was performed using a game we developed, in which two players moved their hand-held displays rapidly in the space around a shared gameboard. Our analysis showed that Redirected Motion effectively and imperceptibly kept players further apart physically than the other techniques. These interaction techniques were implemented using an extensible programming framework we developed for supporting a broad range of multi-user immersive AR applications. This framework, Goblin XNA, integrates a 3D scene graph with support for 6DOF tracking, rigid body physics simulation, networking, shaders, particle systems, and 2D user interface primitives. In summary, we showed that our referencing approaches can enhance multi-user AR by improving accuracy for co-located users and increasing efficiency for remote users. In addition, we demonstrated that our interference-avoidance approach can lessen the chance of unwanted physical interference between co-located users, without their being aware of its use.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 178).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-316).

The overall purpose of the project is to develop a prototype for a web application that will be able to display office landscapes in VR. The prototype will convey a sense of how the web application will look and feel. The focus will be on the VR experience and the purpose of it is to see what the limitations and benefits are with that technology. VR contains 3D graphics and all browser engines are currently collaborating to create WebGL, which is the standard for creating 3D graphics on the web. WebGL is based on OpenGL, which is one of the largest 3D graphics APIs for desktop applications. A comparison of these techniques will be performed in order to show how much functionality the web is missing compared to desktop applications, regarding 3D development. The goal will be to develop a website that contains an embedded VR experience and then perform user tests on it, to find shortcomings in the implementation. Another goal is to produce a quantitative content analysis that compares WebGL and OpenGL to see which functionality WebGL lacks. To succeed, the framework A-frame has been used, which is used to create VR experience in the browser and has been selected because it is open source and has a simple HTML syntax. The prototype was successfully produced, and the user tests show several shortcomings that were later fixed. The quantitative content analysis shows that WebGL lacks 74% of all functionality that OpenGL has and therefore 3D in the browser has long way to go to reach the same quality as for desktop applications. The conclusion is that A-frame is a nice framework with great potential but has shortcomings since HTML is not an object-oriented programing language. / Projektets övergripande syfte är att utveckla en prototyp, till en webbapplikation som ska kunna visa kontorslandskap i VR. Prototypen ska förmedla en känsla för hur webbapplikationen kan se ut och fungera. Fokus kommer ligga på VR-upplevelsen och syftet med det är att se vad det finns för begränsningar och fördelar med den teknologin. VR innehåller 3D-grafik och alla webbläsarmotorer samarbetar i dagsläget för att skapa WebGL, som är standarden för att skapa 3D-grafik på webben. Det API: et är i sin tur baserat på OpenGL som är en av de största 3D-grafik API: er för skrivbordsapplikationer. En jämförelse mellan dessa tekniker kommer utföras i syfte om att se hur mycket 3D på webben saknar jämfört med 3D för skrivbordsapplikationer. Målet kommer vara att utveckla en hemsida som innehåller en inbäddad VR upplevelse och därefter utföra användartester på det för att hitta brister i implementationen. Ett till mål är att ta fram en kvantitativ innehållsanalys som jämför WebGL och OpenGL för att se vilken funktionalitet WebGL saknar. För att lyckas med detta har ramverket A-frame använts, som är till för att skapa VR-upplevelse i webbläsaren och har valts på grund utav att det är open source och har en simpel HTML-syntax. Prototypen togs fram med lyckat resultat och användartesterna visar på ett antal brister som senare åtgärdades. Den kvantitativa innehållsanalysen visar att WebGL saknar 74% av all funktionalitet som OpenGL har och 3D i webbläsaren har en bit kvar att gå. Slutsatsen är att A-frame är ett trevligt ramverk med stor potential men har brister då HTML inte är ett objektorienterat språk

Centralt inom Virtual Reality är upplevelsen att det digitala uppfattas som verkligt. Men varför känns just den här upplevelsen verklig? Genom att undersöka flera olika perspektiv på Virtual Reality, verklighet och nedbrytningar av begrepp inom tidigare Virtual Reality-forskning sökte vi att se hur denna verklighetskänsla uppstod, och kunde användas, inom Virtual Reality-spel. Genom ett gestaltningsarbete som fokuserade på olika typer av scener och kontrollsystem strävade vi mot att föra en diskussion om de olika teoriernas praktiska applikation. / Central to Virtual Reality is the experience of the digital as the real. But from where does this experience stem? By investigating several different perspectives on Virtual Reality, reality and deconstructions of concepts in previous Virtual Reality-science we’ve looked into the creation of this sensation of reality in Virtual Reality-games. Through a practical project, focusing on different types of scenes and control schemes, we then sought to create a discussion focusing on the practical application of the differing theories.

Modern virtual reality is an ever growing subject in today’s society. I delved deeper into some key moments in the development of modern virtual reality. Oculus Rift has shown incredible potential. Some developments even seek to envelope the human senses in virtual reality as well.   With several different approaches to the same solution there are many ways that the experience can affect the overall immersion of a consumer into the product.  The tests I performed were primarily focused around the interaction between the human senses and immersion. The immersion can be increased or decreased by basic means of stimulating the human senses. This test was implemented by having volunteers participate in two phases in a supervised environment. In the first phase, the participants were subjected to an increase in immersion by stimulating senses other than their eyes and ears. The second phase involved reducing the participants’ sensory stimulation to see what the difference in immersion would be between the two phases.  The results of the investigation show that manipulating the human senses does have an impact on immersion when using virtual reality. Immersion can be affected by increasing or decreasing the stimuli for the human senses.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document This dissertation is accompanied by an interactive cd, kept in the main library of the University of Pretoria / Dissertation (MA (Information Science))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Information Science / unrestricted