Aryabrata Basu
In this article, we are going to review a brief history of the field of Virtual Reality (VR), VR systems, and applications and discuss how they evolved. After that, we will familiarize ourselves with the essential components of VR experiences and common VR terminology. Finally, we discuss the evolution of ubiquitous VR as a subfield of VR and its current trends.
Aryabrata Basu
The issue of seamless identification of users previously tracked using existing real-time optical position tracking system such as the OptiTrack system and maintaining continuous tracking state (history) of each of those users is a hard problem. In this article, we present a theoretical framework to integrate existing tracking systems with features such as user identification and history of up to `n' person activity. In our approach, we assume no direct communication with the tracking system, but access to all data it collects. Also, there are no guarantees that 1) the order of each tracked retro-reflective sphere reported is the same, and 2) that there will be any particular number of spheres in the room at any given time. We describe how the data is fused with existing tracking data to provide a seamless transition between other forms of position tracking.
Aryabrata Basu, Kyle Johnsen
Navigating spaces is an embodied experience. Examples can vary from rescue workers trying to save people from natural disasters; a tourist finding their way to the nearest coffee shop, or a gamer solving a maze. Virtual reality allows these experiences to be simulated in a controlled virtual environment. However, virtual reality users remain anchored in the real world and the conventions by which the virtual environment is deployed influence user performance. There is currently a need to evaluate the degree of influence imposed by extrinsic factors and virtual reality hardware on its users. Traditionally, virtual reality experiences have been deployed using Head-Mounted Displays with powerful computers rendering the graphical content of the virtual environment; however, user input has been facilitated using an array of human interface devices including Keyboards, Mice, Trackballs, Touchscreens, Joysticks, Gamepads, Motion detecting cameras and Webcams. Some of these HIDs have also been introduced for non-immersive video games and general computing. Due to this fact, a subset of virtual reality users has greater familiarity than others in using these HIDs. Virtual reality experiences that utilize gamepads (controllers) to navigate virtual environments may introduce a bias towards usability among virtual reality users previously exposed to video-gaming. This article presents an evaluative user study conducted using our ubiquitous virtual reality framework with general audiences. Among our findings, we reveal a usability bias among virtual reality users who are predominantly video gamers. Beyond this, we found a statistical difference in user behavior between untethered immersive virtual reality experiences compared to untethered non-immersive virtual reality experiences.