About this Research Topic
Virtual humans constitute a core part of immersive experiences in VR. With their increasing visual and behavioral fidelity, they have started extending their influence beyond entertainment, playing prominent roles in various domains such as healthcare, education, sports, retail, and so on.
Virtual humans are not limited to artificial entities. Avatars of self and others are also within this category. Collaborative spaces populated with real and artificial humans have enormous potential to provide insights into human behavior/psychology and improve simulation models. An example is crowds research, for which VR maintains a controlled setting, allowing experiments in a cost-effective, ethical, and low-risk environment.
This evolving potential presents many research questions and challenges. We need to ensure realistic appearance without falling into the uncanny valley, diversity in appearance and behavior, autonomy, expressivity, multimodal communication, and real-time interaction for a completely immersive experience regardless of the application area.
We call for original research papers and reviews in topics including but not limited to:
- Crowd simulation in VR
- Perception and evaluation of virtual humans
- Embodiment
- Avatars’ impact on user experience and behavior
- Multimodal communication with virtual humans
- Interaction with virtual humans in VR, including audio and haptics
- Collaboration in VR
- Expressive character animation
- Rendering virtual humans
- Ethical issues involving virtual humans
Virtual humans are not limited to artificial entities. Avatars of self and others are also within this category. Collaborative spaces populated with real and artificial humans have enormous potential to provide insights into human behavior/psychology and improve simulation models. An example is crowds research, for which VR maintains a controlled setting, allowing experiments in a cost-effective, ethical, and low-risk environment.
This evolving potential presents many research questions and challenges. We need to ensure realistic appearance without falling into the uncanny valley, diversity in appearance and behavior, autonomy, expressivity, multimodal communication, and real-time interaction for a completely immersive experience regardless of the application area.
We call for original research papers and reviews in topics including but not limited to:
- Crowd simulation in VR
- Perception and evaluation of virtual humans
- Embodiment
- Avatars’ impact on user experience and behavior
- Multimodal communication with virtual humans
- Interaction with virtual humans in VR, including audio and haptics
- Collaboration in VR
- Expressive character animation
- Rendering virtual humans
- Ethical issues involving virtual humans
Keywords: Virtual Humans, Crowd Simulation, Virtual Reality, Embodiment
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
