Summary
Virtual Environments for Treating the Fear of Heights:
The paper deals with a study on people suffering from Acrophobia, when subjected to Virtual Environments as a part of the therapy. Therapy includes exposing the patient to situations which induce anxiousness and allowing the patient to get over this anxiousness. This kind of treatment (in vivo) of graded exposure to fearful situations has been found to be effective.
In order to simulate similar kind of situations the authors came up with 3 setups:
1) An elevator
Modeled as an open elevator located on the inside of a 49-story hotel.
2) A series of balconies
Four balconies created at different heights: ground level, second floor, tenth and twentieth floor. Balconies were attached to outsides of tall buildings.
3) A series of bridges
Three bridges of different heights spanning the canyon from one side to another. The bridges vary both in heights and steadiness.
Based upon a series of questionnaires ranging from scaling fear to scaling experience, 20 students were entered into the study. Out of the 20, 17 managed to complete the study. At the start of the therapy students were allowed to take turns wearing the HMD and interact with the VR environment allowing them to familiarize with the setup. The essence behind using VE is to make it good enough to elicit fearful responses. Based on the responses from the students the VEs were close enough to reality and induced symptoms which were seen when the students were exposed to the real world situations. There are many pros and cons to using VE as a part of therapy, but the pros outweigh the cons. Pros include the easy accessibility and cheaper options when compared to fear of flights etc. The only con that came out of the study was people not used to HMD experienced effects like nausea which was then overcome by reducing the schedule of the sessions.
Bajura’s work on Ultra-Sound Imaginary
In the paper Merging Virtual Objects with the Real World : Seeing Ultrasound Imagery within the Patient, authors describe the use of system which merges the real world images taken from a video camera attached to the HMD with 3D rendered images from 2D ultrasound scanners.
In order to get a 3D volume data in real time couple of issues should be taken care of. Firstly there should be ways to acquire and render real time ultrasound data and secondly there must be a Virtual Environment which acquires and displays 3D Ultrasound data in real time. The virtual environment system designed by Bajura and his colleagues works as follows:
An ecography image is acquired by an ultrasound scanner and it’s position and orientation in 3D world space are tracked with 6DOF (Degrees Of Freedom), simultaneously the position and orientation of a HMD are also tracked with 6DOF. The pixels of the 2D images are rendered as spheres in the 3D virtual environment giving a sense of it filling the 3D space. The tracking helps in maintain correct 3D position and orientation. This is then combined with the real time video coming from the camera on the HMD to show 2D Ultrasound data located in its’ true 3D location. Being first of its’ kind the system had considerable technical improvements that could be made, but that does not depreciate the value of the work and its’ usefulness in several other medical and non-medical fields.
Summary ThemePark:
The main focus of the paper was to explain how the design of “Pirates” was made to attract guests. Guests seek a complete immersive and interactive experience. In order to provide them with such an experience the creators took certain measures which ensure that even if the guests wander off from their path the design makes sure that they are lead back on to the right path.
Architectural Weenies, Guide Ships, Waterspout and the Sneak attacks make sure that the guest ship does not wander off into the open waters. The way in which the guests are steered to a climax without actually realizing makes the experience even more immersive. In order to achieve success with such a complex model it was important to make the user interface easy to use. Making the steering wheel and the cannons active even before the ride starts seems to be a good idea as it helps the guests acclimatize to the surroundings and the interface. Another point that the authors make is that of making the experience a physical one which cannot be replicated in a living room. This also helps in making the more ride more interesting as it is one thing that distinguishes it from any video game.
Comments are closed.