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Spatial perception in virtual reality (VR) has been a hot research topic for years. Most of the studies on this topic have focused on visual perception and distance perception. Fewer have examined auditory perception and room size perception, although these aspects are important for improving VR experiences. Recently, a number of studies have shown that perception can be calibrated to information that is relevant to the successful completion of everyday tasks in VR (such as distance estimation and spatial perception). Also, some recent studies have examined calibration of auditory perception as a way to compensate for the classic distance compression problem in VR. In this paper, we present a calibration method for both visual and auditory room size perception. We conducted experiments to investigate how people perceive the size of a virtual room and how the accuracy of their size perception can be calibrated by manipulating perceptible auditory and visual information in VR. The results show that people were more accurate in perceiving room size by means of vision than in audition, but that they could still use audition to perceive room size. The results also show that during calibration, auditory room size perception exhibits learning effects and its accuracy was greatly improved after calibration. 

The perception of distance is a complex process that often involves sensory information beyond that of just vision. In this work, we investigated if depth perception based on auditory information can be calibrated, a process by which perceptual accuracy of depth judgments can be improved by providing feedback and then performing corrective actions. We further investigated if perceptual learning through carryover effects of calibration occurs in different levels of a virtual environment’s visibility based on different levels of virtual lighting. Users performed an auditory depth judgment task over several trials in which they walked where they perceived an aural sound to be, yielding absolute estimates of perceived distance. This task was performed in three sequential phases: pretest, calibration, posttest. Feedback on the perceptual accuracy of distance estimates was only provided in the calibration phase, allowing to study the calibration of auditory depth perception. We employed a 2 (Visibility of virtual environment) ×3 (Phase) ×5 (Target Distance) multi-factorial design, manipulating the phase and target distance as within-subjects factors, and the visibility of the virtual environment as a between-subjects factor. Our results revealed that users generally tend to underestimate aurally perceived distances in VR similar to the distance compression effects that commonly occur in visual distance perception in VR. We found that auditory depth estimates, obtained using an absolute measure, can be calibrated to become more accurate through feedback and corrective action. In terms of environment visibility, we find that environments visible enough to reveal their extent may contain visual information that users attune to in scaling aurally perceived depth. 

Active exploration in virtual reality (VR) involves users navigating immersive virtual environments, going from one place to another. While navigating, users often engage in secondary tasks that require attentional resources, as in the case of distracted driving. Inspired by research generally studying the effects of task demands on cybersickness (CS), we investigated how the attentional demands specifically associated with secondary tasks performed during exploration affect CS. Downstream of this, we studied how increased attentional demands from secondary tasks affect spatial memory and navigational performance. We discuss the results of a multi-factorial between-subjects study, manipulating a secondary task's demand across two levels and studying its effects on CS in two different sickness-inducing levels of an exploration experience. The secondary task's demand was manipulated by parametrically varying n in an aural n-back working memory task and the provocativeness of the experience was manipulated by varying how frequently users experienced a yaw-rotational reorientation effect during the exploration. Results revealed that increases in the secondary task's demand increased sickness levels, also resulting in a higher temporal onset rate, especially when the experience was not already highly sickening. Increased attentional demand from the secondary task also vitiated navigational performance and spatial memory. Overall, increased demands from secondary tasks performed during navigation produce deleterious effects on the VR experience. 

Mixed reality (MR) interactions feature users interacting with a combination of virtual and physical components. Inspired by research investigating aspects associated with near-field interactions in augmented and virtual reality (AR & VR), we investigated how avatarization, the physicality of the interacting components, and the interaction technique used to manipulate a virtual object affected performance and perceptions of user experience in a mixed reality fundamentals of laparoscopic peg-transfer task wherein users had to transfer a virtual ring from one peg to another for a number of trials. We employed a 3 (Physicality of pegs) X 3 (Augmented Avatar Representation) X 2 (Interaction Technique) multi-factorial design, manipulating the physicality of the pegs as a between-subjects factor, the type of augmented self-avatar representation, and the type of interaction technique used for object-manipulation as within-subjects factors. Results indicated that users were significantly more accurate when the pegs were virtual rather than physical because of the increased salience of the task-relevant visual information. From an avatar perspective, providing users with a reach envelope-extending representation, though useful, was found to worsen performance, while co-located avatarization significantly improved performance. Choosing an interaction technique to manipulate objects depends on whether accuracy or efficiency is a priority. Finally, the relationship between the avatar representation and interaction technique dictates just how usable mixed reality interactions are deemed to be. 

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. 

Humans communicate by writing, often taking notes that assist thinking. With the growing popularity of collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) applications, it is imperative that we better understand aspects that affect writing in these virtual experiences. On-air writing in VR is a popular writing paradigm due to its simplicity in implementation without any explicit needs for specialized hardware. A host of factors can affect the efficacy of this writing paradigm and in this work, we delved into investigating the same. Along these lines, we investigated the effects of a combination of factors on users’ on-air writing performance, aiming to understand the circumstances under which users can both effectively and efficiently write in VR. We were interested in studying the effects of the following factors: (1) input modality: brush vs. near-field raycast vs. pointing gesture, (2) inking trigger method: haptic feedback vs. button based trigger, and (3) canvas geometry: plane vs. hemisphere. To evaluate the writing performance, we conducted an empirical evaluation with thirty participants, requiring them to write the words we indicated under different combinations of these factors. Dependent measures including the writing speed, accuracy rates, perceived workloads, and so on, were analyzed. Results revealed that the brush based input modality produced the best results in writing performance, that haptic feedback was not always effective over button based triggering, and that there are trade-offs associated with the different types of canvas geometries used. This work attempts at laying a foundation for future investigations that seek to understand and further improve the on-air writing experience in immersive virtual environments.