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1. Teleportation in Virtual Reality; A Mini-Review

   https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2021.730792  

   Prithul, Aniruddha; Adhanom, Isayas Berhe; Folmer, Eelke (October 2021, Frontiers in Virtual Reality)

   Teleportation is a widely implemented virtual locomotion technique that allows users to navigate beyond the confines of available tracking space with a low possibility of inducing virtual reality (VR) sickness. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of prior research on teleportation. We report results from user studies that have evaluated teleportation in comparison to other locomotion methods and survey improved versions of teleportation. We identify a number of areas for future research. 

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2. Walking and Teleportation in Wide-area Virtual Reality Experiences

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR50242.2020.00088  

   Sayyad, Ehsan; Sra, Misha; Höllerer, Tobias (November 2020, International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality)

   Location-based or Out-of-Home Entertainment refers to experiences such as theme and amusement parks, laser tag and paintball arenas, roller and ice skating rinks, zoos and aquariums, or science centers and museums among many other family entertainment and cultural venues. More recently, location-based VR has emerged as a new category of out-of-home entertainment. These VR experiences can be likened to social entertainment options such as laser tag, where physical movement is an inherent part of the experience versus at-home VR experiences where physical movement often needs to be replaced by artificial locomotion techniques due to tracking space constraints. In this work, we present the first VR study to understand the impact of natural walking in a large physical space on presence and user preference. We compare it with teleportation in the same large space, since teleportation is the most commonly used locomotion technique for consumer, at-home VR. Our results show that walking was overwhelmingly preferred by the participants and teleportation leads to significantly higher self-reported simulator sickness. The data also shows a trend towards higher self-reported presence for natural walking. 

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3. Empirical Evaluation of the Effects of Visuo-Auditory Perceptual Information on Head Oriented Tracking of Dynamic Objects in VR

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMAR59233.2023.00124  

   Tolchinsky, Mark; Venkatakrishnan, Rohith; Venkatakrishnan, Roshan; Pagano, Christopher C; Babu, Sabarish V (October 2023, IEEE)

   As virtual reality (VR) technology sees more use in various fields, there is a greater need to understand how to effectively design dynamic virtual environments. As of now, there is still uncertainty in how well users of a VR system are capable of tracking moving targets in a virtual space. In this work, we examined the influence of sensory modality and visual feedback on the accuracy of head-gaze moving target tracking. To this end, a between subjects study was conducted wherein participants would receive targets that were visual, auditory, or audiovisual. Each participant performed two blocks of experimental trials, with a calibration block in between. Results indicate that audiovisual targets promoted greater improvement in tracking performance over single-modality targets, and that audio-only targets are more difficult to track than those of other modalities. 

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4. “Looking'' into Attention Patterns in Extended Reality: An Eye Tracking-based Study

   Qu, Z; Byrne, R; Gorlatova, M (October 2024, IEEE ISMAR 2024)

   Virtual reality (VR) simulations have been adopted to provide controllable environments for running augmented reality (AR) experiments in diverse scenarios. However, insufficient research has explored the impact of AR applications on users, especially their attention patterns, and whether VR simulations accurately replicate these effects. In this work, we propose to analyze user attention patterns via eye tracking during XR usage. To represent applications that provide both helpful guidance and irrelevant information, we built a Sudoku Helper app that includes visual hints and potential distractions during the puzzle-solving period. We conducted two user studies with 19 different users each in AR and VR, in which we collected eye tracking data, conducted gaze-based analysis, and trained machine learning (ML) models to predict user attentional states and attention control ability. Our results show that the AR app had a statistically significant impact on enhancing attention by increasing the fixated proportion of time, while the VR app reduced fixated time and made the users less focused. Results indicate that there is a discrepancy between VR simulations and the AR experience. Our ML models achieve 99.3% and 96.3% accuracy in predicting user attention control ability in AR and VR, respectively. A noticeable performance drop when transferring models trained on one medium to the other further highlights the gap between the AR experience and the VR simulation of it. 

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5. Embodied Third-Person Virtual Locomotion using a Single Depth Camera

   https://doi.org/10.20380/GI2021.24  

   Aniruddha Prithul, Isayas Berhe (May 2021, Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2021)

   null (Ed.)

   Third-person is a popular perspective for video games, but virtual reality (VR) seems to be primarily experienced from a first-person point of view (POV). While a first-person POV generally offers the highest presence; a third-person POV allows users to see their avatar; which allows for a better bond, and the higher vantage point generally increases spatial awareness and navigation. Third-person locomotion is generally implemented using a controller or keyboard, with users often sitting down; an approach that is considered to offer a low presence and embodiment. We present a novel thirdperson locomotion method that enables a high avatar embodiment by integrating skeletal tracking with head-tilt based input to enable omnidirectional navigation beyond the confines of available tracking space. By interpreting movement relative to an avatar, the user will always keep facing the camera which optimizes skeletal tracking and keeps required instrumentation minimal (1 depth camera). A user study compares the performance, usability, VR sickness incidence and avatar embodiment of our method to using a controller for a navigation task that involves interacting with objects. Though a controller offers a higher performance and usability, our locomotion method offered a significantly higher avatar embodiment. 

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