10 Axioms for the Metaverse

 

David has posted a new story to Medium on "10 Axioms for the Metaverse". You can read it at https://medium.com/@davidjhburden/10-axioms-for-the-metaverse-26ac45c0e162

Free Pedagogy for Virtual Reality Training and Education eBook Released

 

Last year David and Prof. Maggi Savin-Baden and Dr Victoria Mason-Robbie (both of the University of Worcester and regular Daden collaborators) produced a 56pp eBook for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) of the UK's Ministry of Defence on the pedagogy of virtual reality. Whilst that version was approved for public release earlier this year we thought it might be nice to have a copy with non-military imagery and which removed the (few) military specific references. This new civilian version of "Pedagogy for Virtual Reality Training and Education" has now also been approved by MOD for public release and you can download a free copy of it right now!

If you've got any comments we'd love to hear them - just email info@daden.co.uk, and if we can help you think through VR and Metaverse issues more generally then again just drop us a line.

Effect of Non-Immersive Virtual Reality Simulation on Type 2 Diabetes Education for Nursing Students: A Randomised Controlled Trial

 

A nice paper that we co-authored with Heidi Singleton form Bournemouth University on her Diabetes project in VR has finally seen light of day. You can read it on open access at:

https://www.nursingsimulation.org/action/showPdf?pii=S1876-1399%2822%2900016-0

The abstract is:

Background: A virtual reality simulation was used to teach treatment of diabetic patients.

Methods: This study evaluated the impact of using virtual reality on short term knowledge of hypoglycaemia, via pairing of a randomised controlled trial, analysed via Partial Least Squares-Structural

Equation Modelling. The setting was two large lecture theatres based at campuses within the UK. Second year nursing students (n = 171) volunteered to take part in the study. Students were randomised into two groups, control (n = 88) and experimental (n = 83). The trial enabled comparison, via preand posttest surveys, of the simulation with normative teaching methods.

Results: VR was found to be significantly (p ≤ .001) better in terms of hypoglycaemia knowledge than normative methods. The method also enabled identification of the key point of action of the simulation, which evidenced that the “engagement to immersion” pathway was responsible for leading to higher knowledge scores in the experimental group.

Conclusion: This paper claims addition to knowledge about how the novel approach taken has the potential to deepen understanding of how virtual technologies can affect learning in nurse education.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2022.02.009.

Early Data Visualisation Experiments in Second Life

 

David Wortley, once the Director of the Serious Games Institute, has done a nice write-up of my early experiments on Data Visualisation in Second Life. You can read it here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ancient-tales-from-metaverse-2-david-wortley/?trackingId=rC4zchpQSve9LEZkMhj5%2Fw%3D%3D

WebXR Wars

Interesting piece in Immersive Web Weekly on the "rift" between the Oculus/Chrome implementation of WebXR and the Firefox/HTC/others version. 

Today XR headset makers face a tough choice among immersive browsers: invest a considerable number of people to maintain a custom Google Chromium-based browser with great WebXR support (as Facebook does for the Quest) or port a Mozilla Gecko-based browser like Firefox Reality and deal with XR support that hasn't changed in any substantial way since Mozilla's Mixed Reality team was laid off more than a year ago.

Last week Shen Ye followed the path of the Pico team in revealing that HTC's new Vive Flow headset will ship with Firefox Reality and Stan Larroque also announced in a YouTube livestream that the Lynx team is working on a Firefox Reality port for their headset.

HTC, Lynx, Pico and Mozilla do not intend, as far as I can tell, to update Gecko's WebXR implementation. The divergence between Chromium- and Gecko-based browsers has already fragmented the fetal immersive web, forcing developers to choose between supporting only one browser engine or writing what is effectively two separate rending and input handling paths for their code. If we want a healthy and open immersive web then this must change.

(editor's note for transparency: I was the original product manager for Firefox Reality but left Mozilla before the layoffs. I have donated to the Mozilla Foundation for more than a decade and continue to do so but have no equity or other financial ties.)

We've bumped into this at Daden when looking at using Pico for a potential project. Pretty typical of the industry, agree a new standard and then immediately split it in two!

360 Photos in Mozilla Hubs

 

Been experimenting a bit with 360 photos in Mozilla Hubs. They are just part of an empty room, so you can add 3D objects "inside" the photo, although without any scripting you can't create hot-spots as such. You could though add links from one to another - but on its own that's not a smooth transition.

What does work well though is the ability for the room owner to load scenes around the participants, so you can do an immersive slideshow, everyone starting in one place, and then load a 360 around them, and then another one and so on. If you added a map or 3D table model like the one below you could end up doing quite a nice human-guided field trip/battlefield tour/holiday slideshow.

The photosphere shots here are ones I took on my iPhone at the base of Uluru, and apart from a few glitches at the joins they come out pretty well in Hubs.

Of course the nice thing about using Hubs for something like this is that its very social and involving - everyone sees the same image at the same time, can see and talk to others, and naturally tends to move around the space towards the bits of the photo they are interested in so larger groups naturally fragment to smaller groups if desired - which with spatial audio enables lots of parallel conversations to go on.

And here's more of a heritage/built environment shot from Hougoumont Farm on battlefield of Waterloo.

Just get in touch if you've got a good idea of how you might be able to use this approach to 360Vr in your teaching/training/education/out-reach.

Introducing Daden Hub - Daden's new virtual home in Mozilla Hubs

 

We've just launched Daden Hub - Daden's virtual home in Mozilla Hubs. 

This 3D environment lets you find out about Daden and what we do, play with some of the Mozilla Hubs tools, and follow teleports to some of our other builds in Mozilla Hubs. 

We are increasingly using it instead of Zoom for some of our internal meetings, and don't be surprised if we invite you into it for external meetings too!

You can visit Daden Hub now in 2D or VR at https://hubs.mozilla.com/SJy5Hwn/daden-hub. 

Here's a short video giving you a tour of the Hub.

Give us a shout if you'd like to meet up in the space and get a more personal demo!

A Tale of Two Venues - AI/SF and Wrestling in VR!

 

Last night I attended a fascinating discussion on put on Science Fiction, Tech, and Games by GamesBeat/VentureBeat. It touched on loads of topics of interest like AI, Virtual Sentience, Digital Immortality and whether NPCs should have free will (shades of a recent Richard Bartle talk). What matters for this post though is that although the event was streamed on Zoom I attended it in the beta of Oculus Venues in VR.

I went to the Oculus Quest2 launch event in an earlier Beta, and it was OK but very basic, just move your avatar to a row of cinema seats and sit there. So what has changed?

You start with an avatar design session in your own room (not much choice of anything, but just enough to minimise identikit avatars), and then some very basic movement and interaction instruction. There is a very nice menu UI on your inside wrist which opens up to give you access to the main tools. You can navigate either by a local teleport method (move a circle to where you want to go) or free physical/joystick-based movement.

When you leave the room and new space loads and you enter the Venues atrium.

There's space for I think about 8 "suites", 4 down each side. I don't know how shared this is. My venue had the poster outside and declared  38 attendees.

Entering the suite another space loads. I say "suite" as there is a ground level space and a balcony space, both looking out to a big 2D screen where the Zoom relay was - 3 talking head webcams.

Now as an event experience it was pretty poor. The difference between the 3D/avatar us a 2D/video them is big. I know you might pick up less nuances if they were avatars but at least it would feel more like a seminar than a cinema. And if you were on Zoom you could ask questions by chat, but there was no chat facility in VR (and without a Bluetooth keyboard typing questions would be a pain). Also the lack of chat meant that there was no side channel between the attending avatars - amplifying points, sharing links, getting to know each other. If someone tried to talk to you it just got in the way of the presentation - just as in the physical world. I know I keep saying it but c.2010 Second Life events felt far better.

Unfortunately the Venues screenshot camera doesn't show the video content!

The other big issue were my co-attendees. I know I'm the only person on the ground level who was there from beginning to end. Maybe a handful of others were there for 20mins plus. I'd say peak occupancy was a dozen, more often half that. Most of the people though were there to play and have fun, several were kids (mics on whole time, talking over the presenters etc), and were just having a laugh. Imaging trying to attend a seminar whilst a group of tweens charges through. Luckily at least one group decided to "take the party upstairs" and when I checked in at the end the balcony certainly seemed busier - but that was after the talk finished.

So not convinced.

On my way out I decided to check out the other suites. Only one was in use with 24hr Wrestling. Same layout. But a couple of big differences.

First, the video was 360 style, in fact I think it was even stereoscopic, so it really did feel like you were ringside watching the fight. It filled the whole of the space in front of you, and had a real sense of depth.

Second, as there was no commentary as such, it was just the fight, all the avatars chatting, shouting and fooling around with the cameras and confetti was all appropriate for the event - everyone was ringside!

The Wrestling crowd - not that you can tell with no video!

So I hadn't expected that a Wrestling event would beat an SF/Tech/Games event as a good demo of using VR for events - but it did. Just goes you need to think about the complete experience when looking at how to use VR (and immersive 3D) for different kinds of events.

Introducing VEDS - A Mozilla Hubs based Virtual Experience Design Space

 

iLRN Attendees: The link to the session is: https://hubs.mozilla.com/PNaoEvs/daden-virtual-experience-design-space - this will launch you straight into Mozilla Hubs. If you're in VR the hub.link code is 563553.

If you haven't been in Mozilla Hubs before we also have a tutorial space at: https://hubs.mozilla.com/fFVfvrq/onboarding-tutorial

On the basis of practice-what-you-preach we've created a prototype Virtual Experience Design Space (VEDS) in Mozilla Hubs and opened it up to public use. The space takes a number of design tools that we've used for many years, and which we already have within our Daden Campus space in Trainingscapes but makes them available to anyone with a browser (including mobile) and any WebXR capable VR headset (such as Oculus Quest). Of course the nice thing about WebXR (and so Hubs) is that everything runs in the browser so there is no software to download - even on the VR headset.

Here's a video walkthrough of the VR experience.

Within the space we have four different 3D immersive experience design tools:

• A dichotomies space, where you can  rank different features (such as linear/freeform or synchronous/asynchronous) against a variety of of different design factors (such as cost, importance, time, risk).
• Sara de Freitas's 4D framework for vLearning design
• Bob Stone's 3 Fidelities model
• Bybee's 5E eLearning design model 

Each is represented by a suitable floor graphic and then how you use them is up to you. There are labelled boxes for the dichotomies space - but you can use them anywhere. There are also a set of markers, so you can get people to "vote" by placing markers (or even their avatar) where they think the most importance/biggest issue/biggest risk is. It's all about using VEDS as a social, collaborative space to do immersive 3D and VR design.

We've linked out in the world to our white paper on the subject for more background on the tools, and you can even browse this in-world (at least from a 2D device, can't get it to work in VR yet!).

Of course Hubs has its own set of generic collaboration tools to use in-world and you're free to make use of those too, we've provided a media frame and a couple of whiteboards to draw on, and you can rez any of their standard objects - why not mark choices with cheeseburgers!

Here's a couple more images of the space:

What to give it a try? Just point your 2D or VR browser to:

https://hubs.mozilla.com/PNaoEvs/daden-virtual-experience-design-space

The hub.link code is 149638 for easier access from VR.

No sign up is necessary, but remember that if you use our room, rather than spawning your own, then you may well meet other users (including us) in there. We're setting the room to "Remix allowed" so you can also create your own version of it - do let us know if do!

If there's interest we might even see about holding some live events in there to talk about the tools in more detail.

We'd love to hear what you think of VEDS - just drop us a line in the comments, or email us at info@daden.co.uk if your organisation could do with a similar space structured around the tools you use.

Social Virtual Worlds/Social VR

The last couple of years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of social virtual worlds around. We define such platforms as internet based 3D environments which are open to general use, are multi-user (so you can see and talk to other people) and within which users are able to create their own spaces. The worlds are typically accessible by both a flat screen (PC/Mac, and sometimes mobile/tablet) and through a VR headset.

At Daden we’ve been using these sorts of environments since the early 2000s. What is really beginning to change the game now is the emergence of WebXR social virtual worlds. These are completely web-delivered, so you only need your browser to access them (from PC, mobile and even VR headset), so there is no download, minimal differences between platforms and really easy access. They are emerging as a great way to get people off of Zoom and into somewhere more engaging for whatever social or collaborative task you need to do. The key examples at the moment are probably Mozilla Hubs and Framevr.io.

Below we highlight some of the key affordances, benefits and uses of these WebXR Social Virtual Worlds.

• Fully 3D, multi-user, avatar based, with full freedom of exploration​
• In-world audio (often spatial) and text chat
• Runs without any download – and even on locked down desktops
• Graphics optimised for lower bandwidths and less powerful devices
• Out-the-box  set of collaboration tools, eg*: screen-share, document-share, whiteboard, shared web browser (*depends on world)
• Free access model for low usage, many also open source
• Developer ability (us) to build custom environments
• Limited scripting ability at the moment
• Give meetings more of a sense of “space” than video calls
• Use environment and movement to help anchor the sessions and learning in memory
• Help train what you can’t usually teach in the classroom
• Excite and engage students and employees

We're also working up an analysis summary tool to describe the capabilities of social virtual worlds (and similar spaces), and a comparison between them - watch this space and read the earlier blog post.

If you'd like to know more about business and educational use of Social Virtual Worlds and their underlying technologies then do get in touch and we can arrange a chat and live demo. We'll also be posting some live spaces here shortly, and you can also read about (and see some demos of) the the WebXR technology that underlies these worlds on our WebXR page.

​

DadenU and SocialVR Try-Out: Spatial

 

As part of my DadenU day I thought I'd try out another SocialVR environment - this time Spatial (not to be confused with vSpatial which is a VR "virtual desktop" app). Spatial is downloaded as an app onto the Quest. The web client only works in "spectator" mode rather than giving you a full avatar presence.

A really nice touch is that your available "rooms" show as little mini-3D models to choose from (see above). However this doesn't look to be scalable as they are a fixed selection of shapres and actually only emphasises the pre-canned nature of the environment.

Another "USP" is that it takes a webcam image to generate your avatar. OK I didn't try to optimise it and was probably look up too much but the result was very uncanny valley... And you can see from the arm position why many apps have gone for only head-body-hands, missing the arms.

There are a number of fixed office/meeting room type environments to use, but no option I can see at the moment to make your own. There is a big display board, but it wasn't really clear how that worked. "Spectators" appeared in world as their webcam feed above the board. You could separately rez post-its, a shared web browser, images from your desktop etc. There's also a library of 3D models which I guess you can add to - but not too obvious how.

Navigation seemed very clunky with step wise rotation on the joystick - hard to manoeuvre in a space which albeit small is still larger than my room to freely wander in VR in.

And that's sort of it.

As a step towards a very business orientated VR space it's not bad, if they can improve the typical avatar capture to the quality that seems to be in the promotional shots that would be great, and a scalable version of the room models would be wonderful to see more widely. But why be a slave to the real-life model - their "Mars" planning room has a small model of a crater, and a small model of Curiosity - why not have both full scale (and the crater small scale) and have the meeting on Mars?

Here's my initial take on Spatial plotted on our radar diagram, and below some key thoughts on each measure.

• Accessibility/Usability - Headset download, reasonably intuitive but clunky movement
• Avatars - nice try at scanning but pretty uncanny valley
• Environment - nice looking but fixed and few
• Collab Functions - reasonable starter set but could improve
• Multi-Platform - really only VR for full functionality
• Object Rez - fixed library only? 
• Open Source/Standards - doesn't seem it
• World Fidelity - none, non-persistent rooms
• Privacy/Security - room ownership/invites only
• Scripting - none

Evaluating 3D Immersive Environment and VR Platforms

 

As part of our work on a forthcoming white paper looking at the ever-growing range of 3D immersive environment platforms available we thought it would be useful to identify some criteria/function sets to help make comparison easier. If you were to use these as part of a selection exercise then you'd probably want to weight them appropriately as different use-cases would need different features. We've also assumed that all offer a common feature set, including multi-user and text/voice communications, walk/run, screengrabs etc. 

A lot of these categories are quite encompassing, and a further analysis may split them down into sub-categories - or create more higher level categories where a particular feature becomes important. We may well revise this list as we work through the platforms (at least 25 at the current count) but here's our starter for 10 (in alphabetical order).

A/accessibility (with a lowercase a) and Usability

How easy is it for people to access and then use the environment? The gold standard is probably now WebXR environments that run in a browser. If the environment needs a download then is it a reasonable size (<500MB), does it install easily, and crucially will it give issues in a locked-down corporate or education environment? Once you've got the app installed is it easy to get to the content you want, do you have to wait for another long download? And then once in-world are all the controls obvious and the core UI (whether on screen or in an HMD) easy to use? Also how hard is it to navigate with your avatar (an area where many new users still struggle)? For HMDs in particular is immersion maintained throughout the experience? Upper-case A Accessibility is a whole other ball game and we'd love to do some work on access to VR for those with disabilities (we've done a demo of an audio virtual world).

Avatar Fidelity & Customisation

People get very focussed on what their avatar looks like. It's interesting that many of the current crop of SocialVR worlds have a) gone for quite cartoony, low rez avatars, and b) gone for a variation of the head-body-hands combination, with all things in between missed out (an inverse kinematics problem). Whilst the low-rez model might work for social gatherings and even business meetings/conferences does it also work for high-skills training? If you've got a lot of people in a multi-user environment then they are more likely to want a distinctive avatar (and often even if only single user!), so how easily and extensively can they customise their avatar? For added points how easily can your avatar emote, gesture, animate, show facial expressions and lip-sync to your voice?

Environment Fidelity and Flexibility

Just as people obsess about their avatar they can also obsess about every last pixel in the detail of the environment- too much Grand Theft Auto and not enough Pokemon Red in their childhood? Whilst a certain level of environmental fidelity is useful, too much can just place too high a demand on the device they are using, or have them spend all their time looking at the scenery and not at the task. What the right balance is will very much depend on the application, so can the platform support the range of fidelities you are likely to use? A nice touch with Mozilla Hubs is a dashboard of the impact of what you are building on its usability by a device - in terms of factors like polygon counts, lighting effects, texture sizes etc - at least it keeps it front of mind. Generally most worlds will support most fidelities, but some have hard limits on object and image upload sizes.

We also might need flexibility in the environment. We might be happy with some out-of-the-box templates for a meeting room, conference or classroom, or just the ability to upload 360 photosphere backdrops. Or we might want to build our own, or import from Blender, 3D Studio Max or elsewhere.

Meeting and Collaboration Functions

One of the biggest use cases for SocialVR is around social and business meetings and gatherings, from a bunch of friends getting together to a big international conference. There is a definite feature set which, whilst it could be customised afresh by each user/creator, is often made available out-the-box to get people started on collaboration and social tasks. This is likely to include items like image, file and screen sharing and virtual white boards, and may include shared web-screens, tilt-brush style in-world 3D drawing/graffiti and 3D object import/rezzing. It is taken as read that the world supports text chat and voice chat. Perhaps one of the most impressive features in this space is the 3D scene recording in EngageVR - nothing weirder than watching a replay of an avatar of yourself from within the same room!

Multi-Platform Support

The key issue for us is does the world support access in a 2D/3D (aka first-person-shooter/Minecraft/Sims) mode from an ordinary PC as well as from a VR Headmounted Display (HMD). Most people still don't have a VR headset, yet immersive 3D is of benefit to all. And even if they do have a VR headset there are a lot of use cases (in a cafe, on the train/bus, sat on the sofa half-watching TV) where they'd probably prefer the 2D/3D approach. There's also the case of which HMDs do they support - will they run on an untethered device like the Quest or do they need the power of a PC behind them like a Rift or Vive? And do they work on some of the "third-party" headsets like the Valve Index, HP Reverb or Pico? Of course if a world has cracked the accessibility challenge through using WebXR then multi-platform support may be more easily achieved (but still isn't a given).

If the world offers a 2D/3D mode then does it run on Windows and Macs (we assume), but what about Linux or Chromebooks? We also find that many students want to use iOS and Android devices, so does it also work on tablets and even smartphones - and here the issues of environment fidelity are likely to bite?

Object Rez, Build and Import

As with the environment we might want some ability to build our own objects in the world, or be happy with the provided libraries. Many worlds offer different permission levels, so "visitors" might not be able to rez things, or only rez a limited range, whereas "owners" can build anything. If I want something that isn't in the in-world library then how do I build it? Do I do this in-world through some sort of virtual Lego, or through what we used to call prim-torture in Second Life? Or do I buy in from a site like Sketchfab (where there may be IP, size or formats issues), or can I import meshes from a 3D design tool like Blender (in which case what formats are supported - glb/gltf seems to be the emerging format for WebXR worlds)?

Open Source/Standards Based/Portability

A lot of the early cyberspace was about walled gardens - AOL, Compuserve etc. The web, driven by standards like HTML and HTTP blew that all away. In particular people could a) build their own content, b) link their content to other people's content and c) host their own content on their own hardware (outside or inside a firewall) if they really wanted to. And apart from any hosting costs you didn't need to pay anybody anything. If we really want 3D environments to take off to the same degree as the web then we need something similar. The software that drives it needs to be open source, the different software and hardware components need to talk to common open standards, and assets (not only 3D objects but also more nebulous things like identities and avatars) need to be portable (or linkable) between spaces. The OpenSim HyperGrid is probably the closest we've had to this, and the move to WebXR might give us another way in to this model.

Persistency/Shared World/In-World Creativity (World Fidelity?)

Probably one of the biggest differences between something like Second Life and the current generation of SocialVR spaces is that the latter lack the persistency and single world model of Second Life. Most of the current platforms (Dual Universe may be an interesting exception) work on a spaces/room model, where you develop in a series of spaces, which you might then open up to visitors, and/or link to other spaces. This is a long way from the one-world model of Second Life (and also Somnium Space) where you just buy land and develop it (which is also closer to the original Snowcrash model). These spaces also tend to have a default state which they revert to once everyone has left - you might be able to rez things whilst you are in, but those objects disappear when you leave - this is particularly true (and probably desirable) in training and learning orientated spaces. If your Object Build model supports in-world building then persistency sort of becomes essential as that is how the world is built. I'm starting to like the idea of "World Fidelity" to describe all this - how much does the virtual world actually feel and behave like the real, peopled, physical world?

Privacy and Security

In a lot of applications you need to have some control of the privacy and security of your part of the virtual environment. You may only want your employees, students or clients in your space. Mind you there are also occasions when you want visitors to have rapid, anonymous access with no sign-up to put them off.  Most platforms offer variations of access control, and perhaps it can be taken as read - but its worth double checking that the implementation will meet your specific needs.

There is also an emerging interest in using blockchain technologies to secure and manage the rights of ownership and IP in the objects created in the virtual world - such as in Somnium Space. This may be overkill for many applications, but is an interesting area to watch.

Scripting and Bots

Being able to walk around a space and look at things is nice. But being able to interact with objects (particularly if they can link through to Web APIs) is better, and being able to see and talk to bots within the space, which makes the whole place seem more alive, is better still. Scripting seems to be a big divide between platforms. Many (most?) of the SocialVR spaces don't support scripting - certainly as an ordinary user, or even as a "developer". The more training orientated ones do have scripting (but what language and how easy is it?), and some platforms have it only through a developer SDK (e.g. MREs in AltSpaceVR). Once every world supports the equivalent of JavascriptXR then we can really begin to see some innovative use of virtual space.

Cost

Cost  is always likely to be a factor in any selection, but I was always taught that it should be on an orthogonal axis to the feature selection, and it may also be related to the Open Source/Portability assessment.

Radar Plot

When we've got  a set of parameters like this we find radar-plots as a nice way to represent target systems. The diagrams below show some prototype radar diagrams for Second Life and Mozilla Hubs.

Radar Plot - Mozilla Hubs

Radar Plot - Second Life

A Starter for 10

We are well aware that there are some things we've left off this list that others might see as vital - thinks like latency for instance. But it is out starter for 10. I'm sure your list varies, and would be interested to hear variations in the comments.

Update: Illustrated version on Medium

Immersive 3D Visual Analytics in WebXR

Whilst this application was originally built as a side project it shows some principles and ideas which are probably worth sharing here. The application uses WebXR to display data in VR. The data is fetched from a web service, and the user can choose what data parameters are used on two of the point features, in this case size and height.  The key thing about WebXR is that it lets this visualisation run in a VR headset without any download or installs. Just point the in-built browser at the URL, click on Enter VR and the browser fades away and you are left in a 3D space with the data. 

The data itself is the star map used in the classic GDW Traveller game (think D&D in space) - but as we say the data isn't important, just the novel interaction.

To try out our Data Visualisation in WebXR just use the browser in your WebXR compatible VR headset to get to this page, and then click on the link below. Once the new page loads just click on the Enter VR button. 

Traveller 3D Map

​Note that whilst the page will open in an ordinary browser you won't be able to do much. But watch the video here to get an idea:

You can also read more about 3D Immersive Visual Analytics and the differences between allocentric and egocentric visualisation in our white paper. 

Revisiting AltSpaceVR

 

I haven't really been in AltSpaceVR much since we were doing some data visualisation experiments with its wonderful (but now I think discontinued) Enclosures feature - such as this pic of visualising USGS Earthquake data though an AFrame web page into AltSpaceVR). And this was back before the rescue of AltSpaceVR by Microsoft.

So it was fun to spend some time in there this week and see what's going on. The initial driver was an ImmerseUK informal meetup, held on the Burning Man site - some nice builds and all very reminiscent of SL circa 2008.

The avatars are less blocky than the originals, but still deliberately cartoony, but better proportioned than the VirBela ones. Things I liked (this was all via Oculus Quest):

• Voice seemed pretty seamless
• Very much an "SL" type experience
• Big spaces to explore
• Point-and-click movement was functional
• The simple interactables (eg fireworks) were fun
• Tutorial was good, and quick and easy to install on Quest
• The barebones Friends system let you message and send Teleport lures
• The menu disc worked pretty well, and pics were available from the web and didn't need downloading from the Quest
• There is flying

Things I was less keen on:

• When you do joystick movement your field of view is blinkered to about half - totally wrecking any immersion and making it hard to keep track of people you are following. This one issue alone makes me reticent about doing much else in the world - which is a pity
• Rotational movement is in degree blocks not smooth - again destroys immersion and you temporarily lose your sense of location
• When you fly your still vertical
• No run ability - lost of multiple point-and-clicks the only answer

So a pity, if it wasn't for those basic movement issues it would be a pretty good place.

The next question for me of course was can I build there? AltSpaceVR has the concept of Universes and Worlds. The Burning Man thing was a Universe, and then each of the artistic sites you went to from it were Worlds. I think its hierarchical, so one world has to be part of one Universe, and access/permissions is controlled by the Universe owner, but I think can then vary between Worlds.

As a user (think you have to click the Beta Programme and Worlds boxes) you get a default Universe which contains your "home" World where you start each time - so you can customise that which is nice. From the web you can then create new Worlds (and I guess new Universes), choosing a starting template (you cant do this from VR). You then go into VR, and choose the World you want to go into and edit.

The main edit panel

Most templates have the same low-poly look as the rest of AltSpaceVR, and most are single room type size- although some are bigger. From the edit menu you can edit the objects in there, change the skybox, and then place new objects. There is quite a good library of objects already (arranged into sets), and you can import individual objects in glTF format. Textures/images can be loaded too - but a lot of this import looks like its via the web interface.

I found most of the templates too claustrophobic so I loaded one which is just a skybox, then rezzed a plane object and made it 50m+, so I started to have a nice place to play with. I then tried placing some objects from the libraries to get a feel for the thing. Manipulation in 3D/VR was OK but not as quick as 2D, and I'd hate to do precision work in there. There's also no scripting at present. Anyway here's a few pics:

The really interesting thing (for us) is that since AltSpaceVR is built on Unity the object sets are just Unity Asset Bundles, and there is a community built importer for them - as well as for location templates. And of course Trainingscapes also uses Unity, and Unity Asset Bundles for locations and inventories. So it might "just" be possible that we can import Trainingscapes assets into AltSpaceVR. Of course with no scripting there's not much we could do, but if there was some simple scripting and a basic API then possibly we could keep the Trainingscapes "engine" on the web, and play the exercise in AltSpaceVR - just as we used to with SL! Of course even though our builds tend to be relatively low poly they are nowhere near as low as AltSpaceVR - so that may be a blocker or just kill performance, but is might be worth a try.

Otherwise it's good to see how AltSpaceVR has come one, and if they fix that blinker issue I might be tempted to come in and build some meaningful spaces - and I'll certainly look out for some decent events and gatherings to join in world - far closer to an SL experience than VirBela or EngageVR for me ( but then that's more what its designed to be).

A 3-Dimension UX Analysis of VR

 

Christian Schott and Stephen Marshall of the Victoria University of Wellington have quite a nice paper out in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2021, 37(1) and on open access at https://ajet.org.au/index.php/AJET/article/view/5166/1681.

Coming from an Experiential Education (EE) perspective they draw on a UX model by Hassenzahl and Tractinsky (2006) which consists "of three facets guided by a positive focus on creating outstanding emotional experiences, rather than on adopting a mostly instrumental, task-oriented view of interactive products, which is a core criticism of traditional HCI." 

• "The first facet responds to this criticism of traditional HCI  and  is  termed  beyond  the  instrumental.  It  incorporates  aesthetics,  a  holistic  approach,  and  hedonic  qualities as features of the user experience. "
• "The second facet builds on affective computing and extends emotion and affect to the user through positivity, subjectivity and the dynamic of antecedents and consequences. "
• "The third facet is the experiential, which emphasises situatedness and temporality, and is characterised by user experiences that are complex, situated, dynamic, unique, and temporally-bounded".

The research used a VR experience of a Fijian island being developed to help better understand tourism economics on a Pacific Island, and the experimental subjects were Tourism Management students.

The UX evaluation identified 8 clusters of responses which map onto the three evaluation dimensions as shown above are were:

• Sense of Place
• Sensory Appeal
• Natural Movement
• Learning Enrichment
• Comprehensive Vision
• Hardware Concerns
• Screen Resolution
• Hyperreal Experience
• Motion Sickness

Pity that Agency wasn't on there, and it would be interesting to see how a 2D/3D evaluation of the same experience would change the ratings and clusters give.

The authors conclude that "The evolution of VR technology is increasingly enabling high fidelity and motivating EE learning activities to be offered at a relatively low cost, particularly when the logistical, resourcing,  and  ethical  issues  of  alternative  approaches  are  considered. The nuanced  analysis  of  the  identified  positive  and  negative  themes,  through  the  lens  of  Hassenzahl  and  Tractinsky’s  (2006)  adapted  three  UX  facets,  has  provided  valuable  albeit  indicative  guidance  where  to  concentrate refinement efforts. However, it is also evident that a great deal of further research on the user experience  is  required  to  extend  our  understanding  of  full-immersion  VR  technology  as  an  important  opportunity for EE and higher education more broadly."

Nice paper, well worth a read, and the UX model and dimensions could be a useful one to bear in mind when looking at evaluating other 3D/VR experiences.

Hassenzahl, M., & Tractinsky, N. (2006). User experience - a research agenda. Behaviour & Information Technology, 25(2), 91-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/01449290500330331

Time to Revisit 2D/3D?

The COVID epidemic is bringing a whole host of challenges to tutors and trainers in trying to deliver engaging teaching to students and staff – and in particular learning experiences which give the student a sense of context, place and shared experience. 

With on-site and classroom learning facing the greatest problems, many are naturally turning to remote teaching by Zoom (and similar), eLearning systems, or video. The diagram below briefly highlights key challenges with each of these - and we'll dive into more detail next week.

Whilst the uptake of headset-based virtual reality (HMD-VR) for both entertainment and training/education has been increasing in the last year or so (and Oculus sold out of the Quest headset early in the pandemic, and its new Quest2 had 5 times the pre-orders of the Quest1), the HMD-VR approach has its own challenges during COVID:

• Sharing headsets within a central location needs rigorous cleaning between use

• Posting/couriering headsets around remote students is costly and risky

• The cost of equipping every student with their own VR HMD is too expensive for most organisations/institutions.

And this is quiet apart from the challenges of the space to use them (although we’ve found the garden is good – at least in summer!) and the discomfort that some users feel.

So given the current situation shouldn't tutors and trainers be re-considering the 2D/3D approach to immersive learning – the Sims/Computer Game style where you operate in a 3D environment but the experience is delivered on an ordinary 2D screen – be that on a PC/Mac, tablet or even smartphone.

 

Such systems have the advantages that:

• Compared to Zoom you place students in the environment and they can learn when they want and a their own pace.
• Compared to eLearning they have more agency, being able to tackle tasks in a variety of orders and ways, and can even undertake collaborative activities.
• Compared to video the students again have more agency, more ability to explore the environment, and content can be changed on a regular basis for minimal or no cost.
• Compared to HMD-VR there are no headsets to buy, clean or distribute, and students can potentially use their own smartphones or tablets alongside their own laptops

Such 2D/3D approaches appear to have been forgotten and brushed aside in the race to the latest "shiny" VR experiences, despite the fact that whilst there is a lot of evidence comparing traditional eLearning to VR there is little that shows significant benefits from VR as against 2D/3D - and even some which shows a negative "benefit"!

So isn't it time to re-assess the 2D/3D approach (and perhaps find a better name for it!)?

And of course with Trainingscapes you can generate content for 2D/3D and VR at the same time, so if the situation changes and VR becomes more do'able (for some students, some of the time) then you'll be ready.

XR 2x2 Segmentation

(click image for better resolution)

Trying to unpick all the different emerging systems in the "extended reality" space such as Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), Virtual Reality (VR) and then the "traditional" approaches such as 3D video games and virtual worlds can be a challenge, and we keep trying to find new ways to understand and communicate it.

In the graphic above we've tried to show the difference between the systems in terms of the access device and what they are trying to do to reality.

In one dimension we have whether the system is trying to completely replace what the user is seeing/experience - they only see the digital world, or whether it is augmenting it - adding new content into what the user otherwise sees as the physical world.

In the other dimension we have whether the system is accessed through a flat screen or a headset. The flat screen might be an ordinary PC screen, or a tablet or smartphone, whilst the headset might be a VR one or an MR one. A key point is that for the AR/MR solutions the access devices has some way of also showing the physical world which is being manipulated - via the phone camera for AR, or a transparent visor for MR.

These two dimensions then give us our four main use cases:

• AR - which is overlaying reality but viewed through a (conventional) flat screen
• MR - which is overlaying reality but viewed through a headset (visor)
• 2D/3D systems like Second Life/computer games - which is completely replacing reality and viewed through a flat 2D screen
• HMD VR - which is completely replacing reality and viewed through a headset (screen)

A key point is that the dimensions are about how we access and what we are trying to achieve. They are not about the software technology being used to generate the environments, or how its branded!

Let us know if you've any comments on this segmentation, and/or if you find it of use.

 

Virtual Reality vs Immersive 3D - the Search for the Right Words!

As a company that been creating immersive experiences for over 15 years we find that the contemporary obsession with headset based virtual reality (HMD-VR) is often at risk of a) forgetting what valuable work has been done in the past in non-HMD immersive 3D environments and b) not highlighting to potential  clients that a lot of the benefits of "VR" can be obtained without an HMD, and not having the funds for, or access to (esp in COVID) HMDs does not need to stop a VR project in its tracks.

One problem is that we just don't have the right terminology, and what terminology we have is constantly changing.

"VR" has almost always been assumed to mean HMD-based experiences - using headsets like the Quest, Rift or Vive - or even their forerunners like the old Virtuality systems.

 But in that fallow period between Virtuality and Oculus DK1 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, There.com and ActiveWorlds were enjoying a boom-time, and often found themselves labelled as "virtual reality".

One problem is that there seems to be no commonly accepted terms for the classic Second Life (or even Fortnite) experience, where you can freely roam a 3D environment but you have a 3rd (or sometime 1st) person avatar view of it. It's certainly not 2D. It's sort of 3D - but not as 3D as the stereoscopic experience using a VR-HMD. I've seen 2D/3D or "3D in 2D" but both are cumbersome. We sometimes refer to it as "first-person-shooter" style (but that doesn't go down well with some audiences), or "The Sims-like". 

There's also a qualitative difference between say a 3D CAD package where you're rotating a 3D model on screen (called an allocentric view) and the experience of running through Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto, or Second Life (called an egocentric view).  You feel "immersed" in the latter group, not just because of the egocentric view point but also because of the sense of agency and emotional engagement.

At a recent Engage event I went to I'd guess (from avatar hand positions) that about 50% of attendees were in VR-HMD and 50% using the immersive-3D desktop client. So should it be described as a VR or immersive 3D system? Our Trainingscapes is the same, we can have users on mobile, PC and VR-HMD devices all in-world, all interacting. And Second Life is often "dismissed" as not being "proper VR" - but when Oculus DK1 was around I went into SL in VR - see below - so did it stop being VR when they went from DK1 to DK2?

So if a system can support both - is it a 2D/3D system or a VR system? That is why we tend to refer to both the 2D/3D  approach and the VR-HMD approach as being "immersive 3D" - as long as you have a sense of agency and presence and the egocentric view. It's the experience and not the technology that counts.

And don't get me started on what "real" and "virtual" mean!

No wonder clients get confused if even we can't sort out what the right terms are, and its far too late for some de jure pronouncement. But perhaps we all could try and be a little bit more precise about what terms we do use, and whether they are just referring to the  means by which you access an experience (e.g. VR-HMD) or to the underlying experience itself (such as a virtual world or virtual training exercise).

In later posts I'll try and look more closely at the relative affordances of the 2D/3D approach (better name please!) vs the VR approach, what researchers experiences of virtual worlds can teach us about VR, and also how "virtual worlds" sit against other immersive 3D experiences.

Garden VR

OK, why has it taken me 4 months of lockdown to realise that I've got the ideal room-scale VR space out in my garden! Having thought of the idea I did have some doubts about a) were there too few straight lines for it to manage the tracking, b) would rough grass flag as intruders in the scene and c) what happened if the dog walked through, but in the end it all worked swimmingly.

Wifi reaches about half way down - so that may be an issue, although I found it hard to draw out more  the first half the garden as a space. Oculus kept putting its "draw boundary" panel right where I was looking and walking and drawing didn't help - but I'll see if I can do better another time. I ended up with a space 15 paces by 7 - far bigger than the attic (and no slopey ceilings).

The image below shows a rough mapping of the space to the WebXR demo room - so I could walk about half of it (Oculus hides the warning barriers in photos - annoying in this case as I'd set myself up to show the exact extent!)

After that everything worked just as though I was indoors - apart from the occasional need to walk back closer to the recover the wifi. I certainly lost all sense of where I was in the garden and alignment, the soft grass didn't interfere with the immersion, and the slight slope up to the house end was a useful warning!

Not related to being in the garden I did notice that I felt more latency/unease with the 3D photospheres (and even more with the stereophotospheres) than with the true 3D spaces - where I felt none at all. Perhaps one reason why there were a lot of reports of unease with VR is a lot of people were having photosphere experiences - although admittedly true latency issues remain (but made worse by doing "crazy" things in VR - like rollercoasters - rather than just walking around in a room!

One experience which was heightened was the Mozilla vertigo experience - walking on ever smaller blocks over nothing. I suppose because I could move more in the garden I could better explore it and fully immerse myself in it - and it certainly made me check I could feel grass under my feet before I stepped - particularly when I just stepped off the blocks and into space.

Anyway all the space allowed me to have a good walk around the solar system model without using teleports and actually get the planets lined up for the first time! Even in the garden they are proving too big so need to at least halve the sizes!

Further Adventures in WebXR - Playing with the Solar System

Having a bit more of a play with WebGL/WebXR and now have a nice draggable solar system! Could be a neat learning tool once finished to get the planets in the right order, too  look at their globes in more detail, and perhaps access further information about them. With World Space Day/Week going virtual might be time to set up a gallery of experiences for people to try that week. 

Need to sort a few more things first though - like rings for Saturn, a starscape backdrop, and change the highlight colours. Maybe also the option to check your order and give the you the right one. Also need to add a sun, and shrink the planets even further!

The more we play with WebGL/WebXR the more excited we are by it as a tactical solution, quickly creating small but powerful bespoke VR experiences that can be instantly accessed by anyone with a WebXR compatible VR headseat without any need for an install!