Within the Institute of Production of the University of Applied Science Cologne, TH Köln, the logistics IT group has initiated a new project for the 3D Virtual Reality digitization of logistics and manufacturing processes. The 3D Virtual Reality Serious Games learning environment is in accordance with the real physical model factory at the institute, where students of business engineering classes study and exercise the interdisciplinary processes of a whole manufacturing unit. On the basis of this project initiation within the institute of production we want to build and offer a widespread open-source standard framework for programming 3D VR Serious Games for Production & Logistics that can be used by other universities and industrial partners. A sneak preview of the game can be viewed in.

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Neuroscience, psychology, and many other fields, such as anthropology or philosophy, try to understand our cognition and cognitive processes. However, as time passed, new views on cognition emerged. One of the newest views on cognition, known as 4E cognition, refers to embedded, embodied, extended, and enacted cognition. Alternatively, to put it in simpler terms, our cognition and cognitive processes emerge from us by being in our environment, interacting with our environment, and enacting our actions within our environment. Although the need to study human cognition from a higher perspective led to the emergence of cognitive sciences, despite these advancements, our experimental methods have stayed relatively unchanged for the past centuries. The recent trends in cognitive science and related fields lean toward real-world experimentation. The main argument for real-world experimentation is the ecological validity of our experimentation and finding. However, despite all the positive voices advertising for real-life experimentation, there are also significant concerns and voices against such a movement. Real-world is full of dynamics and sources of noises and events no one has studied in detail before. As alluring as the idea of moving out of the lab and doing experiments in real life is, the challenges of real-life experimentation should not be neglected, at least with our current methods and tool kits. However, one does not need to entirely abandon the control of the lab environment to get closer to real-life experimentation. Immersive virtual reality experiences can offer a close to the real-life and interactive foundation for conducting cognitive science experiments. Virtual reality experiments can offer the same level of control over the conditions and precision in measurements as laboratory-based experimentation yet enable a realistic, immersive environment to simulate real-life situations. This dissertation seeks to investigate the ecological validity of immersive virtual reality experimentation. The investigation tries to see if virtual reality experimentation can augment the lab-based experiments to simulate closer to real-life situations. The second point of focus is on the notion of ecological validity. Here we tried to investigate which factor among realistic cues, environment, or interaction with the environment plays a vital role in improving the findings of cognitive science experiments. This dissertation seeks to answer these questions with different experiments made and conducted using immersive virtual reality simulations. These studies first investigate virtual reality technologies' current state of the art. These experiments push the limits of what others previously performed in virtual reality experimentation in terms of immersion and realism. We studied ecological validity using these environments. This work examines the hypothesis that "realism" indeed matters and, more importantly, that realism in the interaction with the environment can give us more understanding regarding our observations. Finally, we will observe participants in their behavior using virtual reality experiments with minimal to no intervention to validate the effectiveness of virtual reality experimentation. Of course, the studies presented in this work also have further research questions to answer. These research questions include Gaze behavior during tool interaction or planning while sorting objects on a shelf is an example of investigating low-level cognitive processes. The role of perspective on the moral judgments in trolley dilemma situations or change of attitude and acceptance toward self-driving vehicles is more on the psychological aspects of cognition. However, when added together, the observations gained in each study offer solid arguments toward not only the benefits of virtual reality experimentation but the importance of studying cognition within a natural context in real work with naturalistic interactions. This dissertation provides arguments in favor of virtual reality as a suitable experimentation tool and environment in the absence of standard and precise real-life experimentation methods as a way to simulate real-life experiences in our experiments.

Burn patients undergo excruciating levels of pain throughout their treatment in the hospital. Pain levels increase during medical procedures, such as wound care and debridement. As a part of the treatment plan, traditional pharmacologic interventions are provided. Over time, patients become tolerant of pain medications, specifically opioids. The developed tolerance contributes to more pain felt by the patient. Medical providers limit the number of opioids prescribed to prevent addiction and other adverse effects, contributing to the challenge in treating burn pain. Virtual reality (VR) has been studied as an intervention across various settings to alleviate distressing symptoms in patients. Many studies have shown a relationship between virtual reality and a reduction in pain levels. This thesis reviewed published research when virtual reality was used as an intervention to reduce pain levels in burn patients. A total of 8 studies were analyzed to determine if there was a relationship between these variables and were included in this literature review. Multiple databases were utilized to find articles, including Applied Science and Technology, CINHAL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Medline, Psychinfo, University of Central Florida (UCF) libraries catalog, and Health Source Nursing/Academic edition. Search terms related to virtual reality, (VR, augmented reality, AR, and virtual environment) and burns (burn, burn patients, burn units, and burn nursing) were used, in addition to the term pain. Based on the results of this literature review, those working with burn patients can use and recommend the use of VR during painful procedures with confidence.

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The musical submission for this dissertation is a twenty-minute opera in virtual reality, "Out of the Ordinary/As an nGnách," which was commissioned and produced by Irish National Opera and co-produced by Virtual Reality Ireland. It was developed over two years through a co-creation process with three communities. The music was set to a libretto in English and Irish by Jody O’Neill, and the opera was directed by Jo Mangan. The animated virtual reality world was designed and developed by Algorithm, a creative production company. "Out of the Ordinary/As an nGnách," is one of three trials as part of Traction, an EU-funded research project. The opera is scored for two professional opera singers, professional and non-professional instrumentalists and a community choir. This written submission for my dissertation examines how the community co-creation and the virtual reality technology influenced the final work. I highlight how material and themes from the community workshops informed the narrative and libretto, and I analyze the ways in which the co-creation process and the non-professional artists from the communities are incorporated into the music. I discuss the process of composing for the virtual reality medium and finally, I reflect on where I believe improvements within the process could have been made, and the overall accomplishments of the project.

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Imagery have been utilized in psychological practices and treatment. VR has recently been the focus of research with treatments for post traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and phobias, among other social and behavioral issues. VR allows the researcher to create realistic controlled environments in which they are able to manipulate the experiment. Imagery permits the individual to imagine and recall scenarios from their past in order to create a more personal environment. This experiment aimed to expand upon VR practices and treatment in regards to alcohol research. In this experiment, 70 participants, 39 females and 31 males, were exposed to two VR alcohol and two Imagery alcohol cue environments. Subject craving and psychophysiological measures were taken across all four scenes and all baselines. Overall, craving measures demonstrated that female nondrinkers developed higher cravings during Imagery. Conversely, male social drinkers demonstrated higher cravings during VR. This study supports the use of VR environments in the study of alcohol cue reactivity.