Virtual Reality (VR) applications based on real-world contexts, such as training, healthcare, and entertainment, rely on varying degrees of replication of real settings. However, there is a lack of systematic design support for determining which elements of a setting to retain or modify. We propose Behavior Setting Map (BSM), a contextual analysis tool to help VR designers understand and transform real-world settings into virtual ones. In a two-stage study, we piloted and iterated BSM with 30 student designers and 24 individuals in the early stages of content design for real-world VR applications. The evaluation results provide empirical insights into participants’ perceptions of BSM, suggesting that the tool was perceived as easy to use and useful in supporting early-stage VR content design through a structured, guided, and visualized approach, accommodating designers with varying levels of experience. Additionally, we discuss the design opportunities and potentials of BSM in a wide range of Extended Reality applications.
Portable consumer-headset virtual reality (VR) simulators can broaden access to instrumented surgical training, but their value depends on whether skills acquired in VR transfer beyond the immersive environment. We evaluated SECMA, a portable VR laparoscopic simulator, against conventional box-trainer practice using a common instrumented physical reference task. The analysis comprises N=18 participants (9 SECMA, 9 box trainer) and 66 unique PRE/POST 6-DoF assessment trials. Position and quaternion streams underwent timestamp-level quality control, gap segmentation, quaternion sign-continuity correction, and quaternion-consistent angular reconstruction. Primary outcomes were execution time, 3-D path length, and 95th-percentile angular speed. Both arms showed large PRE–POST reductions in execution time and path length. HC3-robust ANCOVA yielded baseline-adjusted SECMA-minus-box POST contrasts of -3.54 s, -0.446 m, and 0.0076 rad/s, respectively, with all 95
This study investigates the applicability of virtual environments (VR) in evaluating residential privacy perception, particularly in relation to auditory and visual stimuli. Given the increasing reliance on VR for architectural simulations, it is crucial to determine whether privacy evaluations in VR align with those in real-world settings. The study addresses three primary research questions: (1) Can VR accurately reproduce privacy evaluations observed in real environments? (2) How do visual and auditory stimuli interact to influence privacy perception? (3) To what extent do contextual factors, such as individual attributes and environmental conditions, affect these perceptions? To explore these questions, a comparative experiment was conducted in both real and VR environments, examining the psychological relationships between visibility, audibility, and privacy perception. Results indicate strong correlations between real and VR conditions in high-level privacy parameters, but discrepancies in lower-level parameters such as brightness, loudness, and annoyance. Moreover, individual attributes, including noise sensitivity, influenced auditory privacy perception differently across environments. These findings highlight both the potential and limitations of VR in privacy assessment and suggest that while VR can approximate real-world experiences, further refinement is needed to account for contextual and sensory interactions.
This paper presents a training-oriented AR system prototype for face-attached visualization of facial BoNT injection planning, and reports a controlled validation of its image-plane overlay accuracy and usability. The prototype was implemented on Android devices using Unity3D with ARCore face tracking. UV-aligned 2D textures encoding major facial muscle regions and procedure-specific injection-site markers were mapped onto the tracked face mesh and overlaid in real time, while a touch-based GUI provided procedural information. Accuracy was evaluated as 2D image-plane overlay error by comparing AR-indicated sites with predefined clinical reference locations under standardized capture conditions. Usability was assessed using an ISO 9241–11–based questionnaire with dental students. Under the standardized condition, the prototype achieved millimeter-level 2D overlay alignment across 12 procedures (overall mean 2D error: 1.322 ± 0.287 mm). Questionnaire responses indicated favorable perceived clarity and learnability for training-oriented use. The proposed prototype supports intuitive, face-attached visualization of BoNT planning content and demonstrates feasibility for education and pre-procedural training. The reported accuracy reflects 2D on-screen alignment and should not be interpreted as 3D anatomical accuracy. This work contributes a practical UV-texture–based AR pipeline and a validation protocol for BoNT training applications, providing a foundation for future studies incorporating 3D TRE and in-situ clinical evaluation.
Mental health interventions use therapeutic techniques to support emotional well-being, often leveraging emerging technologies to improve accessibility and effectiveness. In recent years, tools such as VR and AI have been increasingly used to create immersive and adaptive therapeutic experiences. This paper presents a framework that integrates generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and virtual reality (VR) to enhance mental health interventions. The system allows for near real-time co-creation of three-dimensional objects during therapy sessions and provides a customizable “safe space”for emotional regulation. In a user study (n = 30), participants completed anxiety (GAD-7) and depression (PHQ-9) assessments, generated virtual objects linked to specific emotions, and rated the system’s usability (SUS) and recommendability (NPS). The framework achieved a high SUS score of 79 and an NPS of 40, indicating robust usability and willingness to recommend. Notably, neither anxiety nor depression levels, nor prior experience with VR or GenAI, significantly affected these measures. These findings highlight the feasibility and acceptability of combining GenAI and VR to offer immersive, personalized, and user-friendly therapeutic environments, representing a promising direction for future clinical validation in people-centered healthcare programs.
Video Mapping, also known as projection mapping, has become an increasingly popular means of telling the story of cultural assets and the context around it by projecting images onto their surface. In this context, a tool to evaluate the narrative effectiveness of projection mapping by collecting feedback on the User Experience is needed. This paper proposes a questionnaire of 22 items for a post-hoc analysis, mainly concerning the User Experience and the visual and auditory quality of Video Mapping projection. To validate the questionnaire, a pilot study was conducted on this specific case of a Video Mapping projection on the pictorial cycle of Nicolò Maria Signorile in the Cathedral of Monopoli, a city in the South of Italy. By analysing the answers collected from 106 participants, a model was derived that relates various factors describing their experience and the storytelling effectiveness. Beyond the specific scenario chosen for testing, the characteristics of the questionnaire make it replicable for other Video Mapping applications, providing a basis for the drafting of a methodology that addresses the User Experience.
The occurrence of earthquakes is not easy to predict, so it is necessary to pre-train people to react quickly when an earthquake actually happens. Most often such pre-training programs take place in unrealistic situations that are unable to provide learners with a sense of presence. This study implemented an immersive virtual reality earthquake escape system called IVR Earthquake Escape in a telecommunication company context, where the time taken to complete the escape task within the VR system served as a measure of learning performance. The study explored the correlates between IVR self-efficacy, anxiety in earthquake situations (hereafter, anxiety), frustration in operating VR equipment (hereafter frustration), and learning performance. A total of 218 useful data were collected and were subjected to structural equation modeling. Results revealed that IVR self-efficacy was negatively related to anxiety and frustration; anxiety was not significantly related to learning performance, but frustration was negatively related to learning performance. Moreover, by comparing the predictive power of anxiety on learning performance to frustration on learning performance, this study found that the predictive power of functional frustration was higher than that of situational anxiety. The results imply that IVR Earthquake Escape can be used to train people who live in the so-called “earthquake belt” to save lives during earthquakes.
In today’s digital society, remote collaboration is increasingly desirable but also challenging. Virtual Reality (VR) offers a promising complement to traditional videoconferencing by presenting embodied avatars and shared 3D workspaces that can enhance social presence and spatial coordination. This paper investigates the spatial and social affordances of contemporary VR meeting platforms for everyday remote collaboration. We report on two mixed-methods case studies with existing teams (N1 = 16; N2 = 9) using five commercial VR meeting applications over multiple sessions. Combining questionnaires with focus groups and observations, we examine how specific affordances—spatial audio, proxemics, avatar customisation and personalisation, and shared boards and artefacts—appear to reshape floor negotiation, deictic reference, and group cohesion. Our findings indicate that VR meetings can foster richer engagement and a stronger sense of “being together” than 2D tools, particularly for divergence-heavy activities such as brainstorming and early design critique. At the same time, we identify three recurring clusters of issues that currently limit VR’s viability for everyday meetings: setup complexity, constrained movement and interaction fidelity, and asymmetric participation between headset and desktop users. We translate these insights into a task-by-modality mapping and design recommendations that can help practitioners decide when to adopt VR, when to rely on 2D tools, and how to combine them in hybrid workflows.
Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly adopted across various fields, due to its ability to immerse people in virtual environments (VEs) and induce emotions. A key factor in this experience is the sense of presence, which is the feeling of being in the VE and the perceived realism of the experience. While prior research has demonstrated the importance of presence in driving emotional outcomes, gaps remain in understanding how the type of VEs and individual differences may influence this relationship. The present study addressed these gaps by comparing the strength of the relationship between presence and emotional outcomes across fear-inducing and relaxation-inducing VEs. The study also investigated whether this relationship was moderated by individual differences such as trait absorption and neuroticism. 125 participants were randomly assigned to one of two VEs. Participants completed baseline assessments, experienced the VE, then completed post-test assessments. Emotional outcomes were assessed through subjective emotional valence and arousal ratings. Results showed that the relationship between presence and emotional arousal was significantly stronger in the fear-inducing VE than in the relaxation-inducing VE. Furthermore, trait absorption and neuroticism significantly moderated the relationship between presence and emotional valence in only fear-inducing VEs. No moderation effects were found for the relationship between presence and emotional arousal. The study points that the relationship between presence and emotional outcomes is not consistent and may be influenced by the type of VE, trait absorption, and neuroticism. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications for designing effective VEs for various applications.
This study examined whether virtual reality (VR)-based martial arts training, operationalized as supervised VR-based boxing, was associated with lower post-intervention aggression among boys with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test active-control design was employed with 84 boys aged 7–10 years who were assigned through a non-random, availability- and feasibility-based procedure to either the experimental group (n = 42) or the control group (n = 42). The experimental group completed 12 supervised sessions of VR-based boxing over four weeks using Meta Quest 3 headsets and The Thrill of the Fight, whereas the control group participated in a time- and attention-matched structured non-VR physical activity program. Aggression was assessed before and immediately after the intervention using the parent-completed Children’s Aggression Questionnaire. After controlling for the corresponding baseline scores, analysis of covariance revealed significant group effects for overall aggression, F(1, 81) = 20.36, p < 0.001, ηp² = 0.20; verbal aggression, F(1, 81) = 18.81, p < 0.001, ηp² = 0.19; physical aggression, F(1, 81) = 19.25, p < 0.001, ηp² = 0.19; relational aggression, F(1, 81) = 17.50, p < 0.001, ηp² = 0.18; and impulsive anger, F(1, 81) = 15.31, p < 0.001, ηp² = 0.16. Baseline-adjusted pairwise comparisons indicated significantly lower post-test aggression scores in the VR-based boxing group across all outcomes. These findings suggest that supervised VR-based boxing, as the specific martial arts format evaluated in this study, may warrant consideration as an adjunct approach to aggression regulation in boys with ODD.
As Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) become central to fostering social interactions in immersive environments, personalization has emerged as a key factor in their effectiveness. Since individuals differ in how they perceive, interpret, and respond to social cues, aligning agent personality with that of users is an important design consideration. However, how user-agent personality alignment influences social perception such as rapport and persuasion remains unexplored. This study examines how personality alignment between users and ECAs influences interaction outcomes across two debate-based conversational contexts: opinion agreement or disagreement. We designed a multimodal ECA that expressed personality through verbal and nonverbal behaviors, tailored to each participant’s Big Five profile across three conditions: Similar, Neutral, and Inverse. Results revealed that personality similarity improved perceived relational quality, especially in agreement contexts. We further found that these effects were differentially shaped by individual personality traits, indicating that responses to personality-adaptive ECAs vary systematically across users. These findings provide design insights for personality-adaptive ECAs, highlighting the importance of personalized interaction strategies that account for both conversational context and user personality traits.
Exposure-based therapy is a common psychological intervention for phobias and anxiety disorders, and exposure-based therapy using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have been evaluated as practical extensions of this method, producing similar experiences through modelled stimuli. This study compares participants’ responses to VR and AR exposure under different types of stimuli. The study investigates two types of fear-based stimuli: spiders and contamination, for which both VR and AR prototypes were developed. A within-subjects experimental design was employed, involving 31 participants drawn from a healthy adult student population who reported their experience intensity and qualitative feedback following exposure to virtual stimuli across both modalities. The type of technology significantly affected the experience intensity: VR elicited a significantly higher experience intensity overall, although the strength of this effect varied depending on the stimulus type. Specifically, VR produced a much stronger experience in the contamination scenario, while AR performed comparably and showed ecological advantages in the spider scenario. We suggest that future mixed-reality exposure system designs could integrate both AR and VR components in a staged approach. AR may be more suitable for early-stage or animal-focused exposure scenarios, whereas VR is better suited for scenarios that demand complete environmental control.
Visual quality is a critical determinant of user experience in immersive virtual environments. Although many studies have focused on integrated measures of presence or immersion, few have examined how the distinct aspects of visual quality relate to specific experiential factors. This review decomposes the visual quality features into three domains: modelling, hardware and rendering, and motion and interaction. User experience in a virtual environment can be divided into perception, realism, immersion, and presence. A detailed manual review of 90 focused studies published between 2014 and 2025 is conducted, and their main findings are mapped according to these categories. This review highlights the importance of linking technical features to user-centred outcomes. It offers practical guidance for virtual reality and augmented reality applications in education, architecture, simulation, entertainment, and healthcare. Furthermore, this review identifies research gaps, including inconsistencies in the reported effects of hardware features and the limited integration of multimodal feedback in current studies. Future research should further explore adaptive and multimodal approaches to improve user engagement.
The act of grasping is a fundamental mode of interaction when manipulating objects, in both physical and virtual environments. Robotic grasping has been studied for more than three decades, leading to the development of sophisticated frameworks. In contrast, achieving believable grasping in virtual reality (VR) requires a complex interplay of graphics, physics, and perception, where realistic haptic feedback and high-quality rendering are crucial for user immersion. This paper reviews grasping techniques in both robotics and VR, analysing VR grasping from visual and haptic perspectives and identifying its current challenges. We then compare robotic and VR grasping, showing how the relatively mature evaluation metrics of robotics can inspire potential directions for improving VR grasping and support the development of solutions that are more stable, natural, and efficient. Beyond surveying existing methods, this paper provides an outlook on upcoming challenges and opportunities in grasping research across robotics and VR. We set out both a high-level vision towards natural, and reliable grasping in real and virtual domains and priorities, including benchmark creation, robust evaluation metrics, and improvements in haptic fidelity and latency.
The present study examined whether changing presentation context can restore sustained attention during monotonous tasks. Participants (N = 164) completed a sustained attention task (i.e., the visual metronome response task) with stimuli presented either on a computer monitor or through a virtual reality (VR) headset. Across two task blocks some participants switched devices (monitor to VR, or VR to monitor), while others used the same device throughout (monitor to monitor, or VR to VR). We observed a sustained attention decrement characterized by increasing response time variability and mind-wandering over time. Participants who switched presentation contexts experienced reductions in mind-wandering compared to those who maintained the same device, demonstrating contextual changes can effectively restore subjective attentional engagement. The type of device switched to (and from) had minimal impact, suggesting the benefit stems from the contextual change rather than the specific presentation mode. Contrary to expectations, overall performance was poorer in VR than on the monitor. However, the effects of switching on task performance were not significant. The results suggest changes in context surrounding a persistent task can be beneficial by temporarily reducing mind-wandering.
Traditional dissection has long been the cornerstone of anatomical education, especially for understanding 3D structures. However, emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D printing now offer effective complementary tools. This study introduces AEducAR3.0, a multi-level educational platform combining AR and 3D printing to enhance neuroanatomy learning. AEducAR3.0 supports three progressive learning levels: (1) Notional Learning, (2) Contextual Notional Learning, and (3) Topographical Learning, each followed by integrated quizzes. Two types of assessment were used: a basic memory recall quiz and a more complex knowledge application task using a 3D-printed phantom. The platform was tested with 70 s-year medical students at the University of Bologna. Data were collected via quizzes, anonymous questionnaires, and interviews. Results showed that the AEducAR3.0 significantly improved learning outcomes, especially in terms of contextual understanding. Students performed better on Level 2 quizzes (70 ± 4
Immersive technologies offer the possibility of facilitating collaboration through new capabilities, like shifting between different scales or perspectives while keeping a first-person view of the workspace. All these features affect collaboration by influencing user behaviour, sense of copresence, and equality among participants. This research aims to gain insights into how providing different perspectives and scales of the workspace influences collaboration in immersive virtual environments that support data manipulation. To this purpose, we developed a multi-user immersive visualisation that represents the elements of a taxonomy as bubbles floating on a tabletop located in an infinite space. We designed an exploratory user study with 24 participants (12 pairs) who performed a collaborative classification task under three spatial perspective conditions: (1) egocentric condition, where both users are represented in the tabletop with the same scale of the bubbles; (2) exocentric condition, with both users as external viewers of the tabletop, and (3) multiscale condition where one user is represented exocentric and the other one is represented egocentric. We collected quantitative and qualitative data from participants to examine how user and social interaction evolved over time in each perspective. We identified user behaviours that might suggest design implications for future collaborative visualisations.
In this paper, we investigate ergonomic and technical factors limiting the effectiveness of gestural interfaces for Extended Reality based on hand pose recognition. For this purpose, we recorded and analyzed a novel dataset including hand poses known to be associated with semantics, performed by heterogeneous subjects wearing a popular Virtual Reality headset (Meta Quest 3) with finger-tracking capabilities. Unlike most related literature, which focuses on testing classifiers for recognizing static poses or dynamic gestures, we used the collected data to analyze these factors. We analyzed the variability of gesture execution and, through human visual labeling of renderings of the captured skeleton, verified the correspondence between the intended gesture labels and the recorded finger articulations. We investigated the effects of hand position, rotation, and skin color on the quality of the recorded poses. We evaluated the discriminability of the executions in feature spaces describing the hand poses, considering both the intended gesture labels and the visually assigned ones. We also collected information on semantic associations, familiarity with the gestures, and ergonomic issues through specific questionnaires. The outcomes of our study show that many poses commonly used to control interfaces and strongly associated with semantic priors are not optimal, as they are not always well executed or robustly tracked. The gesture labels corresponding to participants’ intentions do not always match those assigned during visual annotation, and poses are inadvertently modified during hand rotation. Our results provide valuable guidelines for designing effective gesture-controlled XR interfaces, including optimal dictionaries and system design choices.
With limited randomized controlled trials and a lack of long-term follow-up in previous studies, this study aimed to investigate the augmented effects of Kinect-based virtual reality (VR) on constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) for enhancing upper extremity function in children with unilateral spastic cerebral palsy (CP). In this randomized controlled trial, 23 children with unilateral spastic CP (aged 2 to 12 years; Manual Ability Classification System [MACS] I–III or Mini-MACS I–III) were randomly assigned to either 12-week CIMT alone or CIMT combined with a customized Kinect-based VR (VRCIMT). Each session lasted 1.5 h, twice per week for 12 weeks. Outcome measures were assessed pre-treatment, post-treatment, and at the 3-month follow-up, using the Box and Block Test (BBT) as the primary outcome and ABILHAND-Kids and Goal Attainment Scale (GAS) scores as secondary outcomes. Generalized estimating equations were used to compare the effectiveness of VRCIMT relative to CIMT. The VRCIMT group exhibited significantly better BBT scores than the CIMT group at posttreatment (p = 0.001), with this difference not persisting at the 3-month follow-up. VRCIMT exhibited greater improvements in ABILHAND-Kids at posttreatment (p < 0.001) and follow-up (p = 0.019). Improvements in GAS scores were significantly greater in the VRCIMT group at both posttreatment and follow-up (both p < 0.001). The customized Kinect-based VR system enhanced manual dexterity and abilities in daily activities immediately after CIMT, with sustained gains in abilities in daily activity at follow-up. These findings highlight its potential as a valuable adjunct for addressing upper extremity function in children with unilateral spastic CP. Trial registration: This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02039284) on November, 2017.
By enabling the manipulation of environmental constraints, including ball speed, trajectories, and court conditions, current virtual reality (VR) tennis training systems offer new opportunities to practice specific skills under controlled conditions. However, these systems remain poorly validated and their effectiveness in improving performance is unclear. Therefore, we examined the consistency between biomechanical variables, success rate, mental workload, presence, and acceptance across real-world and virtual environments implemented using head-mounted display systems with two devices: dual game controllers (Controllers VR) and a single haptic racket (Racket VR). Sixteen tennis players were divided into beginner and expert groups and performed forehand and backhand strokes in each environment. In the real-world condition, a principal component analysis of forehand biomechanical variables revealed a first factorial axis characterized by higher linear and angular velocities. This kinematic pattern is associated with higher success rates (r = 0.46) and lower overall mental workload (r = − 0.49). In VR, scores on this axis were systematically lower, suggesting altered biomechanical execution and increased cognitive demands. These effects were partially mitigated in Racket VR, but were more pronounced in expert players. Presence scores in VR were moderate-to-high, suggesting that players may experience a strong sense of presence even when motor behavior is altered toward pantomime-like movements. Overall, this pilot study suggests that the effectiveness of commercial VR solutions for tennis training may be limited, particularly in experts, and highlights the need for longitudinal studies to assess skill transfer from VR training to on-court tennis performance.
