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Wayfinding in Immersive Virtual Environments as Social Activity Supported by Virtual Agents

Frontiers in Virtual Reality, Section Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour

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.

Choose Your Reference Frame Right: An Immersive Authoring Technique for Creating Reactive Behavior

Proceedings of the 30th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology

Immersive authoring enables content creation for virtual environments without a break of immersion. To enable immersive authoring of reactive behavior for a broad audience, we present modulation mapping, a simplified visual programming technique. To evaluate the applicability of our technique, we investigate the role of reference frames in which the programming elements are positioned, as this can affect the user experience. Thus, we developed two interface layouts: "surround-referenced" and "object-referenced". The former positions the programming elements relative to the physical tracking space, and the latter relative to the virtual scene objects. We compared the layouts in an empirical user study (n = 34) and found the surround-referenced layout faster, lower in task load, less cluttered, easier to learn and use, and preferred by users. Qualitative feedback, however, revealed the object-referenced layout as more intuitive, engaging, and valuable for visual debugging. Based on the results, we propose initial design implications for immersive authoring of reactive behavior by visual programming. Overall, modulation mapping was found to be an effective means for creating reactive behavior by the participants.

Honorable Mention for Best Paper!

InsitUE - Enabling Hybrid In-situ Visualizations through Unreal Engine and Catalyst

Springer Lecture Notes (7th International Workshop on In Situ Visualization, ISC 2024)

In-situ, in-transit, and hybrid approaches have become well-established visualization methods over the last decades. Especially for large simulations, these paradigms enable visualization and additionally allow for early insights. While there has been a lot of research on combining these approaches with classical visualization software, only a few worked on combining in-situ/in-transit approaches with modern game engines. In this paper, we present and demonstrate InsitUE, a Catalyst2 compatible hybrid workflow that enables interactive real-time visualization of simulation results using Unreal Engine.