The education of the radiography profession is based within higher education establishments, yet a critical part of all radiography programmes is the clinical component where students learn the practical skills of the profession. Assessments therefore not only have to assess a student’s knowledge, but also their clinical competence and core skills in line with both Health and Care Professions Council and the Society and College of Radiographers requirements. This timely thesis examines the possibility of using the Virtual Environment for RadioTherapy (VERT) as an assessment tool to evaluate a student’s competence so giving the advantage of a standard assessment and relieving time pressures in the clinical department. A mixed methods approach was taken which can be described as a Quantitative Qualitative design with the emphasis being on the Quantitative element; a so called QUAN  qual design. The quantitative evaluation compared two simulations, one in the virtual reality environment and another in the department using a real treatment machine. Students were asked to perform two electron setups in each simulation; the order being randomly decided and so the study would be described as a randomised cross-over design. Following this, qualitative data was collected in student focus groups to explore student perspectives in more depth. Findings indicated that the performance between the two simulators was significantly different, p < 0∙001; the virtual simulation scoring significantly lower than the hospital based simulation overall and in virtually all parameters being assessed. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data supported this finding and identified 4 main themes; equipment use, a lack of reality, learning opportunities and assessment of competence. One other sub-theme identified for reality was that of the environment and senses.

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I offer this thesis as an original and substantial contribution to knowledge in virtual natural environment design practice within computer and video games, by identifying areas of strong/weak practice and to develop a new design framework that utilises a cross-disciplinary approach for practitioners/students/researchers. The thesis combines theoretical frameworks as well practical guidance within a new design framework for virtual natural environment design. The themes relating to this work were examined through a contextual review that focused on previous professional practice as well as critical games produced during the last 30 years. The contextual review involved a detailed textual and visual-based historical survey of virtual landscapes, resulting in a practice-based exploration of virtual natural environment design in computer and video games. One of the main artefacts produced in this research, a three-volume book series titled Virtual Landscapes, presents for the first time these virtual spaces in a digitally enhanced manner through high-resolution panoramic imagery. A review of existing literature and current practice revealed that virtual natural environment design has so far been driven by mainly aesthetic principles and hinted that future emergent design practice should involve a cross/multi-disciplinary approach. The research proposes a new design framework for the creation of virtual landscapes that uses Landscape Character Assessments amongst other elements of environmental design. ShadowMoss Island is a practice-based exploration of how virtual natural environmental design can incorporate elements from Environmental Psychology and Geology, as well as personal reflections and observational analysis based on a field trip. The research proposes that psychological elements added to this new design framework can radically improve the success and impact of the final virtual natural environment. Another practice-based artefact, MindFlow, was created as a pre-production tool for the purpose of environmental design. The proposed tool enables the direct visualisation of collated multimedia (audio, images, video, annotations, design and decisions) in much more natural setting of a single visual space, allowing designers/artists to draw and influence the design and creation of virtual natural environments by bringing together all the different aspects in an intuitive and user-friendly manner. MindFlow helps solve the problem of designers/artists having to retain mental maps of image repositories structure by creating a single visual non-folder tree hierarchy virtual space. The research has significance to both professional and pedagogic practitioners working in the area of computer and video game natural environment design.

Technology has been widely implemented in tourism to enhance the tourism product and tourist experience. However, it remains a challenge for many tourism businesses in urban heritage areas to identify technological solutions and successfully implement them into their business strategy. Particularly for urban heritage sites, it is often challenging to provide information within and around a heritage site without disturbing or destroying the heritage image. Augmented Reality (AR) was identified as a suitable technology to overcome this challenge. However, while AR is not considered a new technology in many industries, and mobile tourism applications with AR functions exist, it has provided limited benefits to tourists due to the lack of using AR functions meaningfully. In addition, the development of wearable devices is increasingly focused on the use of augmented and virtual reality to enhance the user experience. Therefore, there is a need to explore methods of meaningful implementation of such technologies for the tourism industry. This study will investigate current standards of AR technology and tourist requirements in order to examine how to develop meaningful mobile AR tourism applications. For the development of a beneficial product, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), as a tool within Total Quality Management (TQM) was identified as the suitable theoretical background for the purpose of this study. QFD was developed in the theory of quality management, in particular TQM. QFD has since been employed across many industries including the hospitality and tourism sector in a number of studies. However, it has not yet been implemented in the urban heritage tourism context, presenting a knowledge gap. As QFD is designed to incorporate the customers’ view into the product design stage, the aim is to design a meaningful product that is valuable for the visitor and benefit the destination. Therefore, this research aims to eliminate the gap by generating a QFD model for the development of mobile AR tourism applications in the context of urban heritage tourism. Dublin was selected as the research site due to its rich urban heritage. After Dublin’s re-branding strategy in 2013, it has marketed itself with the brand image of ‘Digital Dublin’ in order to encourage the implementation of technology for the purpose of promoting urban heritage tourism. Therefore, Dublin was considered as the suitable research site for the purpose of this study. To achieve the research aim, a mixed method approach was employed for the primary research including semi-structured interviews, focus groups and questionnaires. The study was divided into three research phases. Research phase 1 investigates requirements of tourists, mobile AR application developers and industry experts from Dublin’s tourism industry for the development and use of mobile AR tourism applications in urban heritage tourism. 26 in-depth interviews were conducted with international tourists visiting Dublin in addition to 9 interviews with mobile AR application developers and industry experts from Dublin. Findings were analysed using thematic analysis, providing the knowledge base for Research Phase 2 – focus groups. The second research phase was conducted with tourists as a post-experience study. It aimed to confirm identified tourist requirements from the literature and Research Phase 1, and examine additional findings to design the questionnaire for the quantitative Research Phase 3. Research Phase 3 was conducted with domestic and international tourists in Dublin and provided an importance rating of identified tourist requirements for the development of the final QFD model for mobile AR tourism applications in the urban heritage tourism context. The outcomes from the quantitative research were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to reduce tourist requirements for the final QFD model. By identifying tourist requirements and translating them into respective technical characteristics, this study provides a set of technological elements in hierarchical order for the design of meaningful mobile AR tourism applications in urban heritage tourism. The final 18 requirements are in close alignment with the outcomes of the qualitative research of this study highlighting the need of immediate access to information regardless of time and place, while being able to filter the available information to the tourists’ interest and needs. The final QFD model for the development of mobile AR tourism applications in urban heritage tourism was presented as the outcome of this research. The main contribution to theory is the extension in the identification process of customer requirements for the QFD model. While previous studies in QFD have mainly focused on product functions, such as software and hardware capabilities, the QFD model in this study aims to provide a balance between functional requirements and behavioural characteristics of tourists that are driven by psychological aspects. This study not only explored tourist requirements as in previous studies, but furthermore user resistance factors that would result in avoiding mobile AR tourism applications in urban heritage tourism. Including these criteria as customer attributes in the HOQ, the QFD model was extended to include behavioural and psychological attributes of customers, which is valuable for further implementation of QFD particularly in social studies. This research will furthermore contribute to professionals, Destination Marketing Organisations (DMO) as well as mobile AR application developers alike, by providing a model for the development of mobile AR applications in the context of urban heritage tourism that has incorporated tourist requirements as well as mobile AR application developer considerations. Furthermore, it needs to be acknowledged that the requirements are not limited to mobile AR applications, but are considered particularly valuable for further research in the area of mobile application development for tourism purposes and are expected to be partially transferable to other technology implementations for tourism products.

Virtual Reality is a means of presenting multi-sensory information to an individual via a computer monitor or a head mounted device. These computer generated, three-dimensional environments allow for pseudo real-time interaction and immerse the user in a synthetic space, resulting in a feeling of 'presence'. The many uses of virtual reality are discussed, including the more recent application to psychology. Development of user friendly software packages has allowed psychologists to design virtual environments for the purpose of assessment and training, as well as to further explore psychological theories. The highly visual nature of VR allows this medium to specifically examine spatial cognition in humans. Both clinical patients and non-clinical participants were examined using a number of VR environments to assess various aspects of spatial cognition. Firstly VR was used to determine whether visuospatial deficits are present in patients with Parkinson's disease or closed head injury. The results suggest that VR can be used to assess visuospatial deficit in clinical samples. The remaining studies examined human performance in environments based upon animal maze experiments. Cue preference in multiple choice tasks was investigated and results support the suggestion that distal cues are more important than proximal ones. The final study questioned whether spatial skills learnt in a computer environment could be successfully transferred to the real world and found that this was indeed the case. All of the findings promote the use of virtual reality in a psychological setting, drawing upon the advantages that VR technology has to offer in the experimental field.

Intermolecular binding underlies various metabolic and regulatory processes of the cell, and the therapeutic and pharmacological properties of drugs. Molecular docking systems model and simulate these interactions in silico and allow the study of the binding process. In molecular docking, haptics enables the user to sense the interaction forces and intervene cognitively in the docking process. Haptics-assisted docking systems provide an immersive virtual docking environment where the user can interact with the molecules, feel the interaction forces using their sense of touch, identify visually the binding site, and guide the molecules to their binding pose. Despite a forty-year research e�ort however, the docking community has been slow to adopt this technology. Proprietary, unreleased software, expensive haptic hardware and limits on processing power are the main reasons for this. Another signi�cant factor is the size of the molecules simulated, limited to small molecules. The focus of the research described in this thesis is the development of an interactive haptics-assisted docking application that addresses the above issues, and enables the rigid docking of very large biomolecules and the study of the underlying interactions. Novel methods for computing the interaction forces of binding on the CPU and GPU, in real-time, have been developed. The force calculation methods proposed here overcome several computational limitations of previous approaches, such as precomputed force grids, and could potentially be used to model molecular exibility at haptic refresh rates. Methods for force scaling, multipoint collision response, and haptic navigation are also reported that address newfound issues, particular to the interactive docking of large systems, e.g. force stability at molecular collision. The i ii result is a haptics-assisted docking application, Haptimol RD, that runs on relatively inexpensive consumer level hardware, (i.e. there is no need for specialized/proprietary hardware).

Computer-generated, web-based environments, known as 'virtual worlds', allow for novel and innovative methods of high-quality remote interaction. Virtual worlds have been used in various organisational contexts, including healthcare, though there remains potential for new ways that they may be used to facilitate non-clinical healthcare-related interacitons. This Thesis investigated use of virtual worlds to improve collaboration and engagement in healthcare. Results of research detailed here contribute to new understanding of how interpersonal interactions are altered in a virtual world context, and of drivers, barriers and implications of possible use of virtual worlds in a number of non-clinical healthcare-related contexts, which had not previously been empirically tested.

Virtual environments (VEs) offer huge potential for a wide range of applications including the transfer of spatial knowledge from virtual spaces to real world places; beneficial in situations where it would be impractical, too expensive or dangerous, to acquire that knowledge from the real environment. Research has shown that people can acquire near perfect spatial knowledge about real world environments from threedimensional (3D) VEs. However, the rate of learning is substantially slower, and the information less accurate, than that acquired from the real world. It is often assumed that poor navigational ability in VEs is due to the reduced fidelity of the VE system, fidelity is defined as how closely the various components of the VE system resemble those of the real world. This thesis attempts to better understand the effects of, and the relationship between, three aspects of VE fidelity, field of view, visual scene characteristics and the movement interface. Four experimental studies showed that a wide FOV, a high fidelity visual scene, and a simple movement interface, modestly increased participants' ability to navigate effciently in a desktop VE. However, a study that required participants to physically walk around a VE, displayed via a tracked head mounted display (HMD), showed dramatic performance benefits over the use of stationary desktop displays, and a rotationally tracked HMD that required abstract input for translational movement. Proprioceptive and vestibular feedback allowed participants to navigate a VE as efficiently as they did in a real world study. The potential of VEs for spatial applications, such as learning real world spaces, will not be realised without understanding the effects of the VE system on participants' performance and behaviour. The studies reported in this thesis not only provide much needed empirical results that could be of great benefit to VE application designers, but will also be of interest to researchers investigating human navigation.

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