To achieve the highest levels of immersion and presence possible in a Virtual Reality experience, all of the sensory input we receive in the real world must be simulatable in Virtual Environments (VE) as well. Foregoing the more popular audio-visual feedback, this project aims to better understand the benefits of adding tactile feedback (namely that of airflow) to the VR-developer‟s toolkit. Through user tests, involving a hairdryer to produce a strong airflow that is easily redirected and changed in temperature, feedback was collected on the user experiences and applications of airflow in a VE made to simulate a walk through river lands similar to the ones found in Sweden. While there was no singular way that the participants experienced the added sensory input, most reported the airflow as being equally important to feeling immersed as background music, and on average almost as important as other audio cues. Perhaps most importantly, rich insights were gathered that can guide further research.

Foam fighting is a form of Live Action Role Playing (LARP) that focuses on mock combat and recreational battle, with role-playing aspects taking a less prominent role. It is sometimes referred to as a “poor man’s martial art”.While there does not appear to be any clear documentation concerning the origins, research on foam fighting suggests the sport began in Maryland in the 1970’s and slowly spread throughout the United States. This research will illustrate how the sport of foam fighting demands a level of critical thinking that takes both the participant and audience beyond the sight of a swinging stick. I plan to show how this sport provides an outlet for high levels of creativity, social interaction and strategic planning skills. It is a hobby that has had a great impact on the daily lives of many of its participants and continues to grow and evolve. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Multi-sensory feedback can potentially improve user experience and performance in virtual environments. As it is complicated to study the effect of multi-sensory feedback as a single factor, we created a design space with these diverse cues, categorizing them into an appropriate granularity based on their origin and use cases. To examine the effects of tactile cues during non-fatiguing walking in immersive virtual environments, we selected certain tactile cues from the design space, movement wind, directional wind and footstep vibration, and another cue, footstep sounds, and investigated their influence and interaction with each other in more detail. We developed a virtual reality system with non-fatiguing walking interaction and low-latency, multi-sensory feedback, and then used it to conduct two successive experiments measuring user experience and performance through a triangle-completion task. We noticed some effects due to the addition of footstep vibration on task performance, and saw significant improvement due to the added tactile cues in reported user experience.

This thesis explores the role of interactivity in interfaces for visual artwork display, and the promotion of user engagement. In contrast to most previous work, which has been based on digitally recreating the physical properties of traditional exhibition spaces, this research explores the advantages that interactive digital displays offer to user engagement by investigating different methods and techniques for presenting images of visual artworks in a virtual environment. Throughout this research, various interactive virtual presentation designs, including four interactivity modes, have been developed and tested in lab, field and online studies; data gathering and analysis have used both qualitative and quantitative methods. Further, event parameters have been introduced, the aid of which has allowed the separate phases of user engagement to be examined. The experiments on a broader scale in the final stage of this research are targeted towards demonstrating the potential of the proposed approach and will foster the application of advanced technologies for presentation of visual artworks. This thesis makes a number of contributions in the fields of digital art presentation and methods for measuring user engagement and its different phases. The conceptual framework for describing user engagement is generalised and ex- tended by additional elements. The relation between four designed interactivity modes and the extended phases of user engagement has been investigated, analysed and examined through the application of a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative and quantitative techniques. Finally, the findings from this thesis about the design interactivity modes and evaluation of user engagement can be adopted by and applied in further research.

A telepresença, como um refinamento da teleoperação, permite que o indivíduo controle não apenas a simulação mas a própria realidade. Uma vez que, esta proporciona a habilidade de manipular a realidade física remotamente em tempo real, através de sua representação virtual. Através da tecnologia de realidade virtual, pode-se criar uma grande diversidade de ambientes apropriados aos mais variados tipos de aplicações, possibilitando simulações de situações do mundo real em um ambiente ou mundo virtual. A aplicação de ambientes virtuais no processo de manufatura está relacionada tanto com a manutenção e treinamento, como também a criação e simulação de protótipos virtuais antes de sua utilização no chão-de-fábrica. O uso de redes de Petri para modelagem de ambientes virtuais, mostra-se como uma poderosa ferramenta gráfica/matemática que pode capturar naturalmente as principais características dos sistemas de realidade virtual, além de proporcionar resultados empíricos interessantes na verificação automática de concorrência e sistemas de tempo real. Por permitir modelar a computação não determinística e paralela, a modelagem de ambientes virtuais com redes de Petri é adequada não apenas para simulação, verificação e validação desses sistemas, mas para o próprio controle dos ambientes modelados. Ao associar os elementos de uma rede de Petri com os elementos do paradigma orientado à objetos de um conjunto de classes que constituem os objetos que irão compor os ambientes virtuais e os sistemas de telepresença, obtém-se uma valiosa ferramenta para o controle dos métodos dos objetos virtuais e reais a serem invocados. O objetivo deste trabalho é o desenvolvimento do modo de associação de redes de Petri com objetos virtuais e reais para controle de ambientes virtuais imersivos e telepresença, com base na descrição de um sistema de autoria de telepresença com controle em RP. Os resultados obtidos trarão avanços quanto ao desenvolvimento e implantação de aplicações de manufatura virtual em um ambiente de visualização 3D imersivo. / The telepresence, as a refinement of teleoperation, allows the individual not only to control the simulation but also the own reality. Since this provides the ability to manipulate the physical reality remotely in real time, through its virtual representation. Through the technology of virtual reality, one can create a wide variety of environments suitable for all kinds of applications, enabling simulations of the situations in a real world environment or virtual world. The application of virtual environments in the manufacturing process is related to both the maintenance and training, and also the creation and simulation of virtual prototypes before their use in the shop-floor. The use of Petri nets for modeling virtual environments, shows itself as a powerful graphics/mathematics tool that can capture the main features of virtual reality systems, as well as offering interesting empirical results in automatic verification of concurrence and real time systems. By allowing to model non-deterministic and parallel computation, modeling of virtual environments with Petri nets is appropriate not only for simulation, verification and validation of these systems, but also for controlling the environments modeled. By associating the elements of a Petri net with the elements of the object oriented paradigm of a set of classes that are the objects that will compose the virtual environments and telepresence systems, one gets a valuable tool for controlling of the methods of virtual and real objects to be invoked. The objective of this work is the development of the mode of association of Petri nets with virtual and real objects for controlling immersive virtual environments and telepresence, based on the description of a telepresence authoring system controlled by PN. The results will bring progress on the development and deployment of virtual manufacturing applications in an immersive 3D visualization environment.

A telepresença, como um refinamento da teleoperação, permite que o indivíduo controle não apenas a simulação mas a própria realidade. Uma vez que, esta proporciona a habilidade de manipular a realidade física remotamente em tempo real, através de sua representação virtual. Através da tecnologia de realidade virtual, pode-se criar uma grande diversidade de ambientes apropriados aos mais variados tipos de aplicações, possibilitando simulações de situações do mundo real em um ambiente ou mundo virtual. A aplicação de ambientes virtuais no processo de manufatura está relacionada tanto com a manutenção e treinamento, como também a criação e simulação de protótipos virtuais antes de sua utilização no chão-de-fábrica. O uso de redes de Petri para modelagem de ambientes virtuais, mostra-se como uma poderosa ferramenta gráfica/matemática que pode capturar naturalmente as principais características dos sistemas de realidade virtual, além de proporcionar resultados empíricos interessantes na verificação automática de concorrência e sistemas de tempo real. Por permitir modelar a computação não determinística e paralela, a modelagem de ambientes virtuais com redes de Petri é adequada não apenas para simulação, verificação e validação desses sistemas, mas para o próprio controle dos ambientes modelados. Ao associar os elementos de uma rede de Petri com os elementos do paradigma orientado à objetos de um conjunto de classes que constituem os objetos que irão compor os ambientes virtuais e os sistemas de telepresença, obtém-se uma valiosa ferramenta para o controle dos métodos dos objetos virtuais e reais a serem invocados. O objetivo deste trabalho é o desenvolvimento do modo de associação de redes de Petri com objetos virtuais e reais para controle de ambientes virtuais imersivos e telepresença, com base na descrição de um sistema de autoria de telepresença com controle em RP. Os resultados obtidos trarão avanços quanto ao desenvolvimento e implantação de aplicações de manufatura virtual em um ambiente de visualização 3D imersivo. / The telepresence, as a refinement of teleoperation, allows the individual not only to control the simulation but also the own reality. Since this provides the ability to manipulate the physical reality remotely in real time, through its virtual representation. Through the technology of virtual reality, one can create a wide variety of environments suitable for all kinds of applications, enabling simulations of the situations in a real world environment or virtual world. The application of virtual environments in the manufacturing process is related to both the maintenance and training, and also the creation and simulation of virtual prototypes before their use in the shop-floor. The use of Petri nets for modeling virtual environments, shows itself as a powerful graphics/mathematics tool that can capture the main features of virtual reality systems, as well as offering interesting empirical results in automatic verification of concurrence and real time systems. By allowing to model non-deterministic and parallel computation, modeling of virtual environments with Petri nets is appropriate not only for simulation, verification and validation of these systems, but also for controlling the environments modeled. By associating the elements of a Petri net with the elements of the object oriented paradigm of a set of classes that are the objects that will compose the virtual environments and telepresence systems, one gets a valuable tool for controlling of the methods of virtual and real objects to be invoked. The objective of this work is the development of the mode of association of Petri nets with virtual and real objects for controlling immersive virtual environments and telepresence, based on the description of a telepresence authoring system controlled by PN. The results will bring progress on the development and deployment of virtual manufacturing applications in an immersive 3D visualization environment.

As the use of simulation increases across many diff erent application domains, the need for high- fidelity three-dimensional virtual representations of real-world environments has never been greater. This need has driven the research and development of both faster and easier methodologies for creating such representations. In this research, we present two diff erent inference-based geometric modeling techniques that support the automatic construction of complex cluttered environments. The fi rst method we present is a surface reconstruction-based approach that is capable of reconstructing solid models from a point cloud capture of a cluttered environment. Our algorithm is capable of identifying objects of interest amongst a cluttered scene, and reconstructing complete representations of these objects even in the presence of occluded surfaces. This approach incorporates a predictive modeling framework that uses a set of user provided models for prior knowledge, and applies this knowledge to the iterative identifi cation and construction process. Our approach uses a local to global construction process guided by rules for fi tting high quality surface patches obtained from these prior models. We demonstrate the application of this algorithm on several synthetic and real-world datasets containing heavy clutter and occlusion. The second method we present is a generative modeling-based approach that can construct a wide variety of diverse models based on user provided templates. This technique leverages an inference-based construction algorithm for developing solid models from these template objects. This algorithm samples and extracts surface patches from the input models, and develops a Petri net structure that is used by our algorithm for properly fitting these patches in a consistent fashion. Our approach uses this generated structure, along with a defi ned parameterization (either user-defi ned through a simple sketch-based interface or algorithmically de fined through various methods), to automatically construct objects of varying sizes and con figurations. These variations can include arbitrary articulation, and repetition and interchanging of parts sampled from the input models. Finally, we affim our motivation by showing an application of these two approaches. We demonstrate how the constructed environments can be easily used within a physically-based simulation, capable of supporting many diff erent application domains.

Deictic pointing—pointing at things during conversations—is natural and ubiquitous in human communication. Deictic pointing is important in the real world; it is also important in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) because CVEs are 3D virtual environments that resemble the real world. CVEs connect people from different locations, allowing them to communicate and collaborate remotely. However, the interaction and communication capabilities of CVEs are not as good as those in the real world. In CVEs, people interact with each other using avatars (the visual representations of users). One problem of avatars is that they are not expressive enough when compare to what we can do in the real world. In particular, deictic pointing has many limitations and is not well supported. This dissertation focuses on improving the expressiveness of distant pointing—where referents are out of reach—in desktop CVEs. This is done by developing a framework that guides the design and development of pointing techniques; by identifying important aspects of distant pointing through observation of how people point at distant referents in the real world; by designing, implementing, and evaluating distant-pointing techniques; and by providing a set of guidelines for the design of distant pointing in desktop CVEs. The evaluations of distant-pointing techniques examine whether pointing without extra visual effects (natural pointing) has sufficient accuracy; whether people can control free arm movement (free pointing) along with other avatar actions; and whether free and natural pointing are useful and valuable in desktop CVEs. Overall, this research provides better support for deictic pointing in CVEs by improving the expressiveness of distant pointing. With better pointing support, gestural communication can be more effective and can ultimately enhance the primary function of CVEs—supporting distributed collaboration.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boise State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-102).

For the past few years, virtual environments (VEs) have gained broad attention from both scholarly and practitioner communities. However, in spite of intense and widespread efforts, most VE-related research has focused on the technical aspects of applications, and the necessary theoretical framework to assess the quality of interfaces and designs has not yet been fully developed. This research, as a response to such challenges, concerns the usability of three-dimensional VEs. More specifically, this study aims to investigate the effects of wayfinding affordance design on users’ task performance and perceptual experience in 3D desktop VEs. For this purpose, four different wayfinding affordance conditions were set up: Fixed Detached Affordance Cues (FDAC) condition, Switchable Detached Affordance Cues (SDAC) condition, Portable Embedded Affordance Cues (PEAC) condition and Fixed Embedded Affordance Cues (FEAC) condition. Maps and directional cues were employed to implement wayfinding affordance. The results show that the design of wayfinding affordance has significant effects on users’ perceptual experience as well as their task performance. Task performance was significantly better where the maps and directional cues were provided independently from the VE interfaces (FDAC, SDAC). With regard to perceptual experience, the effect was significant only in simple environments. In these environments, the fixed and, therefore, stable interfaces (FEAC, FDAC) were found to provide a better sense of presence for users whereas the manipulative interfaces (PEAC, SDAC) offered a greater state of playfulness. The research findings also indicated that the design of 3D interfaces had a greater impact on non-expert users than on expert users. / text