Abstract: Body awareness is relevant for the efficacy of psychotherapy. However, previous work on virtual reality (VR) and avatar-assisted therapy has often overlooked it. We investigated the effect of avatar individualization on body awareness in the context of VR-specific user experience, including sense of embodiment (SoE), plausibility, and sense of presence (SoP). In a between-subject design, 86 participants embodied three avatar types and engaged in VR movement exercises. The avatars were (1) generic and gender-matched, (2) customized from a set of pre-existing options, or (3) personalized photorealistic scans. Compared to the other conditions, participants with personalized avatars reported increased SoE, yet higher eeriness and reduced body awareness. Further, SoE and SoP positively correlated with body awareness across conditions. Our results indicate that VR user experience and body awareness do not always dovetail and do not necessarily predict each other. Future research should work towards a balance between body awareness and SoE.

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Abstract: Photographs and 3D reconstructions of buildings as well as textual information and documents play an important role in art history and architectural studies when it comes to investigating architecture, the construction history of buildings, and the impact these constructions had on a city. Advanced tools have the potential to enhance and support research workflows and source criticism by linking corresponding materials and annotations, such that relevant data can be quickly queried and identified. Images are a primary source in the 3D reconstruction process, with the possibility to create spatializations of additional photographs of buildings which were not part of the initial SfM process, enabling the linking of annotations between these photographs and the respective 3D model. In contrast, identifying and locating respective annotations in text sources requires a different approach due to their more abstract nature. This paper presents concepts for automatic linking of texts and their respective annotations to corresponding images, as well as to 3D models and their annotations. Controlled vocabularies for architectural elements and a graph representation are utilized to reduce ambiguity when querying related instances.

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between perceived object motion and the experience of time in virtual environments. We developed an application to measure how the motion properties of virtual objects and the degree of immersion and embodiment may affect the time experience. A first study (n = 145) was conducted remotely using an online video survey, while a second study (n = 60) was conducted under laboratory conditions in virtual reality (VR). Participants in both studies experienced seven different virtual objects in a randomized order and then answered questions about time experience. The VR study added an "embodiment" condition in which participants were either represented by a virtual full body or lacked any form of virtual body representation. In both studies, time was judged to pass faster when viewing oscillating motion in immersive and non-immersive settings and independently of the presence or absence of a virtual body. This trend was strongest when virtual pendulums were displayed. Both studies also found a significant inverse correlation between the passage of time and boredom. Our results support the development of applications that manipulate the perception of time in virtual environments for therapeutic use, for instance, for disorders such as depression, autism, and schizophrenia. Disturbances in the perception of time are known to be associated with these disorders.

Abstract: Currently, there is an ongoing debate about the influencing factors of one's extended reality (XR) experience. Plausibility, congruence, and their role have recently gained more and more attention. One of the latest models to describe XR experiences, the Congruence and Plausibility model (CaP), puts plausibility and congruence right in the center. However, it is unclear what influence they have on the overall XR experience and what influences our perceived plausibility rating. In this paper, we implemented four different incongruencies within a virtual reality scene using breaks in plausibility as an analogy to breaks in presence. These manipulations were either located on the cognitive or perceptual layer of the CaP model. They were also either connected to the task at hand or not. We tested these manipulations in a virtual bowling environment to see which influence they had. Our results show that manipulations connected to the task caused a lower perceived plausibility. Additionally, cognitive manipulations seem to have a larger influence than perceptual manipulations. We were able to cause a break in plausibility with one of our incongruencies. These results show a first direction on how the influence of plausibility in XR can be systematically investigated in the future.

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Abstract: In this article, we present a selection of recent studies from our research group that investigated the relationship between time perception and virtual reality (VR). We focus on the influence of avatar embodiment, visual fidelity, motion perception, and body representation. We summarize findings on the impact of these factors on time perception, discuss lessons learned, and implications for future applications. In a waiting room experiment, the passage of time in VR with an avatar was perceived significantly faster than without an avatar. The passage of time in the real waiting room was not perceived as significantly different from the waiting room in VR with or without an avatar. In an interactive scenario, the absence of a virtual avatar resulted in a significantly slower perceived passage of time compared to the partial and full-body avatar conditions. High and medium embodiment conditions are assumed to be more plausible and to less different from a real experience. A virtual tunnel that induced the illusion of self-motion (vection) appeared to contribute to the perceived passage of time and experience of time. This effect was shown to increase with tunnel speed and the number of tunnel segments. A framework was proposed for the use of virtual zeitgebers along three dimensions (speed, density, synchronicity) to systematically control the experience of time. The body itself, as well as external objects, seem to be addressed by this theory of virtual zeitgebers. Finally, the standardization of the methodology and future research considerations are discussed.

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