Body centred interaction in immersive virtual environments

Realistic uses of Virtual Reality (VR) technology closely integrate user training on virtual objects with VR-assisted user interactions with real objects. This paper shows how the Interactive Theory of Perception (ITP) may be extended to cover such cases. Virtual objects are explained as concrete models (CMs) that have an inner generation mechanism, and the ITP is used to explain how VR users can both perceive such local CMs, and perceptually represent remote real objects. Also, concepts of modeling and representation are distinguished. The paper concludes with suggestions as to how the ITP methodology developed here could be extended to iconic external representations and models generally.

2003

2016

Abstract Twentieth-century art favors an aesthetic no longer oriented to beauty (which is associated with harmony and unity), but to “sublime”. Immersion by itself is a triumph of the experience the sublime offers over a detached viewpoint of the object-artwork; it mobilizes the entire human body seeking to offer a full experience, which is essential for the artwork to move us; it can fill us, though, with awe and make us weak-willed beings that accept without criticism the value system and the ideological choices inherent in the artwork. Virtual worlds are increasingly seductive, and people immersing in them end up perceiving reality through the lenses of virtual reality; and wanting to create a reality resembling virtual reality. The current paper attempts to investigate how it is possible to achieve a kind of immersion that allows for a full experience not marginalizing thought. It will provide an in-depth analysis of the nature of immersion, and of the means used to achieve it. This will help highlight which kind and which “quantity” of immersion has to be sought for, in order not to provoke adverse and unwanted results, such as the creation of the feeling of uncanny, or create empty signifiers, that make us loose interest in the artwork.

2009

Virtual reality (VR) creates a sensory and psychological experience for users as an alternative to reality. More than just one technology, VR is an ever-growing set of tools and techniques that can be used to create the psychological sensation of being in an alternate space. Underpinning the techniques used to create compelling virtual environments is the basic observation that information is fated for processing by a human sensory and perceptual system that has evolved to interact with regularities occurring in the physical world . The more one can provide the system with sensory inputs that simulate and effectively mimic those encountered in nature, the more convincing the resulting perceptual and cognitive experience will be for the user. The ultimate goal of designers and users of VR environments is a computer-generated simulation that is indistinguishable to the user from its real-world equivalent. Reaching toward this goal has already enabled us to realize some of VR's potential for use in training, engineering, scientific research, and for providing uniquely gratifying entertainment experiences .

CyberPsychology & Behavior, 2000

... The body image application was de-... Octane MXE with Octane Channel Option cou-pled with a wide field-of-view (40 degrees hor-izontal by 105 degrees horizontal with 40 de-grees overlap) head mounted display (Division dVisor) was used to create an immersive 3D in ...

Immersion into virtual reality is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total environment. The name is a metaphoric use of the experience of submersion applied to representation, fiction or simulation. Immersion can also be defined as the state of consciousness where a "visitor" (Maurice Benayoun) or "immersant" (Char Davies)'s awareness of physical self is transformed by being surrounded in an artificial environment; used for describing partial or complete suspension of disbelief, enabling action or reaction to stimulations encountered in a virtual or artistic environment. The degree to which the virtual or artistic environment faithfully reproduces reality determines the degree of suspension of disbelief. The greater the suspension of disbelief, the greater the degree of presence achieved.

1995

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-created sensory experience that allows a participant to believe and barely distinguish a "virtual" experience from a real one using computer graphics, sounds, and images to reproduce electronic versions of real-life situations. This digest describes how VR works and discusses applications of VR in surgery, scientific exploration, and education and training. Future developments and policy suggestions from the National Research Council's study on uses of VR are outlined. (Contains 15 references.)

"Il digitale ha aperto la strada a nuove forme di espressione e introspezione della materia, ma il computer molto spesso è relegato al ruolo di tecnigrafo. Muoversi nelle tre dimensioni dello spazio, percepirlo visivamente, poterlo toccare immergendosi nella sua simulazione, non sono esperienze immediate nel fare architettonico contemporaneo. Eppure la “realtà virtuale” ha una storia radicata nel tempo. Spesso Realtà Aumentata e Realtà Virtuale si intrecciano, perché le tecnologie mescolano elementi tangibili alla credibile finzione. I confini sono talmente labili che forse è il caso di parlare di Realtà Mista, il luogo dove avviene la mimesi fra oggettualità e rappresentazione. Ma quali sono i limiti di queste tecnologie? Obiettivo di questa analisi è l’individuazione di quegli strumenti hardware e software utili alla definizione di possibili configurazioni multimediali, che consentano all’utilizzatore di esplorare interattivamente modelli tridimensionali in ambienti immersivi".

Intelligent Robotics and …, 2009

The abstract should summarize the contents of the paper using at least 70 and at most 150 words. It will be set in 9-point font size and be inset 1.0 cm from the right and left margins. There will be two blank lines before and after the Abstract. . . .

The problem of perception in a virtual environment could be reformulated as: what can we learn in the philosophy of perception from a theory of " perception in virtual environments " , given the specific nature of that environment? It is obvious that the discourse goes in circles, because it is always from theories elaborated in the field of the so-called " real " that we develop the difference, but it is a process typically philosophical, which, on the other hand, can make sense only if it can be shown that the virtual is an existent being that has (is) an ontological structure of its own. It is thus distinguished by asking the elementary question: what are the elements that make it possible for one to perceive a virtual environment? How are difference and the subject-object relation constituted in virtual environments? What does it mean, in short, to perceive a virtual object? The answer to these simple questions may emerge from a phenomenology of the virtual body. In my paper, after having indicated the direction in which to think of the body endowed with technological prostheses, I can rethink it in terms of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. I will approach the specific notion of " virtual body " by preliminarily clarifying the qualities or features of any experience of virtuality; I will thus define the concept of virtual and eventually the concept of " virtual reality ". First of all, every experience of virtual reality is multimedia and interactive. The multimediality feature indicates the peculiar representational richness of a mediated environment that may be accounted for as made up of two factors: wideness (quantity: number of senses which are simultaneously involved), and deepness (quality of perceptions, or sensory information). Furthermore, the interactivity feature designates «how much the users interact in the 1 For further reading please see Roberto Diodato, Aesthetics of the Virtual, revised and edited by S.