Profile

Effective navigation and interaction within immersive virtual environments rely on thorough scene exploration. Therefore, wayfinding is essential, assisting users in comprehending their surroundings, planning routes, and making informed decisions. Based on real-life observations, wayfinding is, thereby, not only a cognitive process but also a social activity profoundly influenced by the presence and behaviors of others. In virtual environments, these 'others' are virtual agents (VAs), defined as anthropomorphic computer-controlled characters, who enliven the environment and can serve as background characters or direct interaction partners. However, little research has been done to explore how to efficiently use VAs as social wayfinding support. In this paper, we aim to assess and contrast user experience, user comfort, and the acquisition of scene knowledge through a between-subjects study involving n = 60 participants across three distinct wayfinding conditions in one slightly populated urban environment: (i) unsupported wayfinding, (ii) strong social wayfinding using a virtual supporter who incorporates guiding and accompanying elements while directly impacting the participants' wayfinding decisions, and (iii) weak social wayfinding using flows of VAs that subtly influence the participants' wayfinding decisions by their locomotion behavior. Our work is the first to compare the impact of VAs' behavior in virtual reality on users' scene exploration, including spatial awareness, scene comprehension, and comfort. The results show the general utility of social wayfinding support, while underscoring the superiority of the strong type. Nevertheless, further exploration of weak social wayfinding as a promising technique is needed. Thus, our work contributes to the enhancement of VAs as advanced user interfaces, increasing user acceptance and usability.

We present a data acquisition and visualization pipeline that allows experts to monitor additive manufacturing processes, in particular laser metal deposition with wire (LMD-w) processes, in immersive virtual reality. Our virtual environment consists of a digital shadow of the LMD-w production site enriched with additional measurement data shown on both static as well as handheld virtual displays. Users can explore the production site by enhanced teleportation capabilities that enable them to change their scale as well as their elevation above the ground plane. In an exploratory user study with 22 participants, we demonstrate that our system is generally suitable for the supervision of LMD-w processes while generating low task load and cybersickness. Therefore, it serves as a first promising step towards the successful application of virtual reality technology in the comparatively young field of additive manufacturing.

Authentication poses a significant challenge in VR applications, as conventional methods, such as text input for usernames and passwords, prove cumbersome and unnatural in immersive virtual environments. Alternatives such as password managers or two-factor authentication may necessitate users to disengage from the virtual experience by removing their headsets. Consequently, we present an innovative system that utilizes virtual agents (VAs) as interaction partners, enabling users to authenticate naturally through a set of ten gestures, such as high fives, fist bumps, or waving. By combining these gestures, users can create personalized authentications akin to PINs, potentially enhancing security without compromising the immersive experience. To gain first insights into the suitability of this authentication process, we conducted a formal expert review with five participants and compared our system to a virtual keypad authentication approach. While our results show that the effectiveness of a VA-mediated gesture-based authentication system is still limited, they motivate further research in this area.

The iterative design process of virtual environments commonly generates a history of revisions that each represent the state of the scene at a different point in time. Browsing through these discrete time points by common temporal navigation interfaces like time sliders, however, can be inaccurate and lead to an uncomfortably high number of visual changes in a short time. In this paper, we therefore present a novel technique called TENETvr (Temporal Exploration and Navigation in virtual Environments via Teleportation) that allows for efficient teleportation-based travel to time points in which a particular object of interest changed. Unlike previous systems, we suggest that changes affecting other objects in the same time span should also be mediated before the teleport to improve predictability. We therefore propose visualizations for nine different types of additions, property changes, and deletions. In a formal user study with 20 participants, we confirmed that this addition leads to significantly more efficient change detection, lower task loads, and higher usability ratings, therefore reducing temporal disorientation.

In this late-breaking report, we first motivate the requirement of an embodied conversational agent (ECA) who combines characteristics of a virtual tour guide and a knowledgeable companion in order to allow users an interactive and adaptable, however, structured exploration of an unknown immersive, architectural environment. Second, we roughly outline our proposed ECA’s behavioral design followed by a teaser on the planned user study.