About this Research Topic

Background

Extended reality (XR) technologies (e.g., headsets, CAVEs) offer very interesting new modes of visualising information, collaborating, watching images or videos, and playing. Nevertheless, XR comes with some technological limitations and drawbacks; some are related to human perception (e.g., visual-vestibular conflict) others to immersing participants by serving high-quality assets fast enough (frame-rate, streaming). More research is needed to acquire data and understand how one moves in complex virtual environments, possibly in which navigating and interacting is important.

While we know so much about how people look at scenes on a computer monitor while the head is in a stationary chin-rest, we know very little about how attention operates embedded within a freely moving body. VR provides a unique opportunity to study attention while balancing ecological validity (allowing people to move freely) and experimental control. However, very little is known about how people prefer to use their bodies to navigate or explore in VR, and whether this is representative of how people prefer to use their bodies in the real world. Learning more about how we use our body and gaze to apprehend the virtual world would pave the way towards answering the following questions:

* How does the ability to move freely in VR influence or affect visual behaviour, exploration, or interaction in the 3D environment?
* Can VR environments elicit natural body movements (e.g., what are the effects of wearing the headset, being constrained to room-scale or stationary boundaries, or tethering on natural body movement)?
* What are the effects of VR movement modes on natural body movement, and how does it influence gaze and head movements?
* What individual differences in body posture, head movement propensity, or personality might affect preferences for certain types of VR movement modes?
* Can we leverage how people move in VR to predict a participant's movement/path?

Themes related to body and gaze in VR:
* Behaviour analyses;
* Tracking method and measurements;
* Modelling and prediction;
* Influence of individual differences and task/environment conditions;

Type of manuscript:
* Original research

Keywords: Body tracking, gaze tracking, virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality, navigation, modelling

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