Virtual Reality (VR) is applied in various areas were a highUser Experienceis essential. The sense ofPresencewhile being in VR and its relation toUser Experiencetherefore form crucial aspects, which are yet to be understood. This study aims at quantifying age and gender effects on this connection, involving 57 participants in VR, and performing a geocaching game using a mobile phone as experimental task to answer questionnaires measuringPresence(ITC-SOPI),User Experience(UEQ) andUsability(SUS). A higherPresencewas found for the older participants, but there was no gender difference nor any interaction effects of age and gender. These findings are contractionary to preexisting limited work which has shown higherPresencefor males and decreases ofPresencewith age. Four aspects discriminating this study from literature are discussed as explanations and as a starting point for future investigations into the topic. The results further showed higher ratings in favor ofUser Experienceand lower ratings towardsUsabilityfor the older participants.

Driven by the challenges of Industry 4.0 seamless data integration and conversion becomes an even more pressing topic than it already has been in the past. In this context virtual technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) will play a defining role when it comes down to speed up the development process of new products, factory planning and supporting the workforce with novel intelligent assistance systems to keep up with the faster growing product diversity, especially in the face of the demographic challenge. The key enabling technology to foster this development is the seamless and automated integration of all product data defined in the CAD systems into VR/AR systems. Currently, there is still a major gap in this data integration when more than just plain geometry should be transferred, especially outside of the software ecosphere of a CAD system provider. Considerable effort by VR experts has to be put in to reduce the use case specific complexity of models and to rebuild the already in the CAD system defined kinematic mechanisms and animation. Whilst these obstacles were hindering SMEs in the past to participate of the benefits that virtual technologies provide, this cannot be afforded any longer. In this paper we will outline a CAD and VR system independent workflow for an automated model complexity reduction, animation and kinematic mechanism adoption. We do this by defining light weighted system interfaces and showing solution concepts for each area of the conversion problem. Finally, we verify the presented method on a proof of concept implementation

For various VR/MR/AR applications, such as virtual usability studies, it is very important that the participants have the feeling that they are really in the environment. This feeling of “being” in a mediated environment is described as presence. Two important factors that influence presence are the level of immersion and the navigation method. We developed two navigation methods to simulate natural walking using a Wii Balance Board and a Kinect Sensor. In this preliminary study we examined the effects of these navigation methods and the level of immersion on the participants' perceived presence in a 2×2 factorial between-subjects study with 32 participants in two different VEs (Powerwall and Mixed-Reality-See-Through-Glasses). The results indicate that reported presence is higher for the Kinect navigation and Powerwall for some facets of presence.

Virtual Reality (VR) is used for a variety of applications ranging from entertainment to psychological medicine. VR has been demonstrated to influence higher order cognitive functions and cortical plasticity, with implications on phobia and stroke treatment. An integral part for successful VR is a high sense of presence – a feeling of ‘being there’ in the virtual scenario. The underlying cognitive and perceptive functions causing presence in VR scenarios are however not completely known. It is evident that the brain function is influenced by drugs, such as ethanol, potentially confounding cortical plasticity, also in VR. As ethanol is ubiquitous and forms part of daily life, understanding the effects of ethanol on presence and user experience, the attitudes and emotions about using VR applications, is important. This exploratory study aims at contributing towards an understanding of how low-dose ethanol intake influences presence, user experience and their relationship in a validated VR context. It was found that low-level ethanol consumption did influence presence and user experience, but on a minimal level. In contrast, correlations between presence and user experience were strongly influenced by low-dose ethanol. Ethanol consumption may consequently alter cognitive and perceptive functions related to the connections between presence and user experience.

Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is a highly successful surgical procedure, but complications remain, including aseptic loosening, early dislocation and misalignment. These may partly be related to lacking training opportunities for novices or those performing THA less frequently. A standardized training setting with realistic haptic feedback for THA does not exist to date. Virtual Reality (VR) may help establish THA training scenarios under standardized settings, morphology and material properties. This work summarizes the development and acquisition of mechanical properties on hip reaming, resulting in a tissue-based material model of the acetabulum for force feedback VR hip reaming simulators. With the given forces and torques occurring during the reaming, Cubic Hermite Spline interpolation seemed the most suitable approach to represent the nonlinear force–displacement behavior of the acetabular tissues over Cubic Splines. Further, Cubic Hermite Splines allowed for a rapid force feedback computation below the 1 ms hallmark. The Cubic Hermite Spline material model was implemented using a three-dimensional-sphere packing model. The resulting forces were delivered via a human–machine-interaction certified KUKA iiwa robotic arm used as a force feedback device. Consequently, this novel approach presents a concept to obtain mechanical data from high-force surgical interventions as baseline data for material models and biomechanical considerations; this will allow THA surgeons to train with a variety of machining hardness levels of acetabula for haptic VR acetabulum reaming.