Nowadays, Virtual Reality (VR) technology can be potentially used everywhere through wearable head-mounted displays. Nevertheless, it is still uncommon to see VR devices used in public settings. In these contexts, unaware bystanders in the surroundings might influence the User Experience (UX) and create concerns about the social acceptability of this technology. The user acts in a Social Environment (SE), characterized by surrounding people's number, proximity, and behavior. Simultaneously, VR applications often require a different degree of interactivity concerning body movements and controllers interaction. In this paper, the influence of Social Environments, and degree of interactivity on User Experience and social acceptability is investigated. Four Social Environments were simulated employing 360° Videos, and two VR games developed with two levels of interactivity. Results showed a statistically significant influence of Social Environments on Overall UX as well as Public VR, Interaction, Isolation, Privacy and Safety acceptability, and of the degree of interactivity on Presence, Valence, Arousal, Overall UX, UX Hedonic quality, and Safety acceptability. Findings indicate that Social Environments and degree of interactivity should be taken into account while designing VR applications.

As virtual reality (VR) technology is extensively developing in past years, more and more people are using it in different fields. One of the fast-developing areas in VR is exergaming, a combination of physical exercise and a game. VR exergames that aim to engage people in physical activity should look and feel good for users regardless of their age, gender, or their previous VR experience with similar technologies. However, recent studies showed that those factors are influencing the user experience (UX) with virtual reality. Building on top of the initial study that has reported on the effect of human influencing factors for exergaming, with this work, we investigated the influence of user parameters (such as age, gender, and previous VR experience) on their motivation for sports and VR exergaming. The study was done using a crowdsourcing platform to recruit a diverse set of participants, with the aim to explore how different user factors are connected to sports motivation. Results show significant differences in the user’s sports motivation and affinity for technology interaction depending on the age group, gender, previous experience with VR, their weekly exercise routine, and how much money they spend on sports yearly.

Virtual reality (VR) objects react dynamically to users’ touch interactions in real-time. However, experiencing changes in weight through the haptic sense remains challenging with consumer VR controllers due to their limited vibrotactile feedback. While prior works successfully applied pseudo-haptics to perceive absolute weight by manipulating the control-display (C/D) ratio, we continuously adjusted the C/D ratio to mimic weight changes. Vibrotactile feedback additionally emphasises the modulation in the virtual object’s physicality. In a study (N=18), we compared our multimodal technique with pseudo-haptics alone and a baseline condition to assess participants’ experiences of weight changes. Our findings demonstrate that participants perceived varying degrees of weight change when the C/D ratio was adjusted, validating its effectiveness for simulating dynamic weight in VR. However, the additional vibrotactile feedback did not improve weight change perception. This work extends the understanding of designing haptic experiences for lightweight VR systems by leveraging perceptual mechanisms.

In recent years 360° videos have been becoming more popular. For traditional media presentations, e.g., on a computer screen, a wide range of assessment methods are available. Different constructs, such as perceived quality or the induced emotional state of viewers, can be reliably assessed by subjective scales. Many of the subjective methods have only been validated using stimuli presented on a computer screen. This paper is using 360° videos to induce varying emotional states. Videos were presented 1) via a head-mounted display (HMD) and 2) via a traditional computer screen. Furthermore, participants were asked to rate their emotional state 1) in retrospect on the self-assessment manikin scale and 2) continuously on a 2-dimensional arousal-valence plane. In a repeated measures design, all participants (N = 18) used both presentation systems and both rating systems. Results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference in induced presence due to the presentation system. Furthermore, there was no statistically significant difference in ratings gathered with the two presentation systems. Finally, it was found that for arousal measures, a statistically significant difference could be found for the different rating methods, potentially indicating an underestimation of arousal ratings gathered in retrospect for screen presentation. In the future, rating methods such as a 2-dimensional arousal-valence plane could offer the advantage of enabling a reliable measurement of emotional states while being more embedded in the experience itself, enabling a more precise capturing of the emotional states.

The integration of Digital Twins (DTs) with Extended Reality (XR) technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), is transforming industries by enabling more immersive, interactive experiences and enhancing real-time decision-making. User-centered evaluations are crucial for aligning XR-enhanced DT systems with user expectations, enhancing acceptance and utility in real-world settings. This paper proposes a user-centric evaluation method for XR-enhanced DT applications to assess usability, cognitive load, and user experience. By employing a range of assessment tools, including questionnaires and observational studies across various use cases-such as virtual tourism, city planning, and industrial maintenance-this method provides a structured approach to capturing the user's perspective.