Social virtual reality (VR) platforms offer unique features that can foster interpersonal relationships that are "closer than real." This study investigates how these platform features influence friendship dynamics in social VR. Through semi-structured interviews with 23 Japanese VRChat users, we explored the characteristics of close relationships formed in social VR, the processes of relationship development, and the role of platform features in shaping these dynamics. Our findings reveal that social VR facilitates a form of selective self-presentation and co-presence through embodied avatars and rich environmental contexts, which can lead to rapid and intense friendship formation. Users reported developing close bonds without relying on real-life background information, instead focusing on perceived familiarity and compatibility within the virtual space, highlighted by the avatar's appearance. Further, platform features such as ``join'' functions that allow users to teleport to friends' locations, were assigned special meanings by users, contributing to developing friendships.
This study proposes a time prediction model for locomotion along a polyline path with body angular movements in Virtual Reality (VR). We divide such locomotion into two components: navigating in multiple line-segment paths and turning at line-segment intersections. In the first component, locomotion in each line-segment path consists of acceleration, maximum velocity, and deceleration phases. We formulated equations to estimate the locomotion time for each phase and then accumulated them to model the total time. In the second component, a linear relationship was revealed between task time and turning angles. We established an integrated model based on the equations of the two components and verified the effectiveness of the model with three experiments. The results indicate that our model outperformed two baseline models with a greater R^2 and a smaller gap between the predicted and actual time. Our study benefits VR locomotion design with body angular movements.
In social Virtual Reality (VR), particularly within VRChat, a significant group of users often referred to as ``mutes'' refrain from voice communication. This study analyzes 4212 discussion entries, including both original submissions and comments, from the r/VRchat subreddit to explore the experiences and reasons behind this practice. Our findings indicate that muteness is an integral aspect of social VR culture, yet mute users face challenges, including exposure to abusive behaviors and communication barriers in a fast-paced environment. Factors of social VR like harassment, heightened social anxiety from the immersive presence, and the complexities of identity management can discourage voice communication, leading many to adopt ``muteness'' as a response. This behavior can be seen within the broader context of social disability, challenging normative communication assumptions. We highlight the risks of generalizing marginalized communities and emphasize the need for further research to address and support the unique needs of these groups in social VR spaces.
While users could embody virtual avatars that mirror their physical movements in Virtual Reality, these avatars' motions can be redirected to enable novel interactions. Excessive redirection, however, could break the user's sense of embodiment due to perceptual conflicts between vision and proprioception. While prior work focused on avatar-related factors influencing the noticeability of redirection, we investigate how the visual stimuli in the surrounding virtual environment affect user behavior and, in turn, the noticeability of redirection. Given the wide variety of different types of visual stimuli and their tendency to elicit varying individual reactions, we propose to use users' gaze behavior as an indicator of their response to the stimuli and model the noticeability of redirection. We conducted two user studies to collect users' gaze behavior and noticeability, investigating the relationship between them and identifying the most effective gaze behavior features for predicting noticeability. Based on the data, we developed a regression model that takes users' gaze behavior as input and outputs the noticeability of redirection. We then conducted an evaluation study to test our model on unseen visual stimuli, achieving an accuracy of 0.012 MSE. We further implemented an adaptive redirection technique and conducted a proof-of-concept study to evaluate its effectiveness with complex visual stimuli in two applications. The results indicated that participants experienced less physical demanding and a stronger sense of body ownership when using our adaptive technique, demonstrating the potential of our model to support real-world use cases.
Live drills are the gold standard for mass casualty incident (MCI) training but are often too resource-intensive for widespread implementation. Immersive technologies offer a promising alternative, but can they deliver comparable fidelity and effectiveness? Working with a local disaster response academy, this paper investigated the potential of Augmented Virtuality (AV) in MCI training through two phases. First, we conducted a landscape analysis of 126 papers across the virtuality continuum, revealing trends in population, training focus, and evaluation metrics. Second, we empirically evaluated an AV system for mass casualty triage training against traditional role-playing and Virtual Reality (VR) approaches, involving 60 trainees in an operational curriculum. Results indicated that both AV and VR surpassed traditional simulations, with AV's tactile integration significantly enhancing physical engagement, satisfaction, and triage accuracy. Through the lens of triage, we discussed the broader practical implications of integrating immersive technologies like AV into real-world MCI education.
Social virtual reality (SVR) aims to recreate embodied social experiences similar to those offline. However, concerns about privacy and safety have hindered its widespread adoption. This study examines how information disclosure and perceived control over information in SVR are influenced by 1) boundary permeability (e.g., interruptions from an unknown external user) and 2) identifiability of one’s conversation partner (e.g., access to their offline profile). We also explore how different social presence perceptions and privacy concerns may mediate these relationships. Comparing the experiences of participants (n = 94) randomly assigned to four different mock interview scenarios, we find the perceived actorhood of one’s conversation partner mediated the positive relationship between offline profile access and disclosure. Additionally, more permeable environmental boundaries led to significantly lower levels of disclosure. Qualitative responses emphasized SVR’s limitations in saliently conveying nonverbal expressions. Implications for future research and the design of SVR as a viable communication medium are discussed.
Immersive realities enable social interactions that are radically different from traditional communication technologies, but how we experience immersion together is not yet indistinguishable from face-to-face interactions. Some social signals are not stable across realities, may change in semantics, or are missing all together. Understanding how social signals impact behaviours and experiences of social connection in immersive environments is key to creating experiences that are meaningful, satisfying, and productive. We completed a lab study where 6 groups of 6 participants (N=36) completed co-located social tasks in an instrumented face-to-face environment and its digital twin, creating a rich open dataset of 1.8 million rows across 45 columns. Our quantitative results demonstrate the stability of position as a social signal, measure lower social synchronisation in XR compared to face-to-face, and propose a method for bench marking XR against face-to-face interactions. This enables direct quantitative comparisons between experiences of co-located physical and virtual interactions for the first time.