Heights.
Virtual Environments for Treating the Fear of Heights
Hodges, L., Barbara Rothbaum, Rob Kooper, Dan Opdyke, Tom Meyer, Max North, Johannes de Graaff, & James Williford
This was an experiment to use VR to treat Acrophobia – Fear of Heights using the method of Graded Exposure by taking the patient ‘out into the real world’ without having to take the patient really out into the real world. They replicated scenarios of a balcony, elevator and a bridge, slowly increasing levels. For the display, I agree with the decision to go with the monoscopic display since to be able to tackle the fear of heights for people, it is necessary to make them believe they are ‘there’, thus the feeling of presence is essential. The level of detail enabled with the monoscopic display is a good trade off.
The observation that the level of anxiety for people kept increasing for people as the level (height of bridge) kept increasing proved that the ‘reality’ afforded by the system was believable. Also, repeated turns reduced their level of anxiety, which proves that the strategy worked. However, something that could be a reason is that at the back of the mind people know that this is a staged setup. The first attempt, just because of the harsh newness of the setup, people feel anxious. On the next attempts the feeling that they ‘can’t fall, after all’ might kick in, which may disprove the result. However, the experiment may definitely be a cheaper alternative to actually taking the patient to a real scenario and more effective than systematic desensitization.
Scan.
Merging virtual objects with the real world: seeing ultrasound imagery within the patient.
Bajura, M., Henry Fuchs, Ryutarou Ohbuchi (1992).
This is an old paper which tries to overlay the ultrasound display in 3D over the mother in real time when the doctor is performing the ultrasound. The main technical problem that the paper deals about is being able to generate a true 3D representation since such a technology was not available yet. The method considered was to take spatial 2D slices and piece them together into a 3D volumetric display. One idea was a conventional 2D sector scanhead with an annular array transducer is rotated by a stepper motor to get a third scanning dimension.
Another big issue to tackle was being able to utilize this acquired data and being able to display it in real time with minimal lag. A feedback of the system mentioned the swimming of the scene as a problem. An interesting observation was the the AR display seemed more plastered on to the surface than appearing to be a 3D hollow into the surface. They tried an alternative of creating a hollow surface, but another idea could be using a little depth shadow effect which gives u a feeling of going just within the skin, and not creating a hollow altogether.
As noted, this technology, on improvement has been useful in architectural scenarios where people could visualize a structure and other surgical operations.
Action.
Designing interactive theme park rides.
Schell, Jesse and Joe Shochet.
In this paper, entertainment was given more importance than realism to generate the sense of immersion for the users. There were many places where the acceptable laws were broken like a blue canyon ball and the ship moving at 90mph , but since the developers were working on the premise of a movie gave them the flexibility to ‘bend some rules’ and still make it believable and immersive.
The images of the setup looked impressive where they created a life size model of a ship with immersive sound, contextual vibrations of the ship when a canon hits and many small things which made it interesting. It was interesting to read the techniques they used to direct the sailors to move towards the islands where all the activity was. Another interesting ploy was the climactic ending which had a more immersive experience in the scenario when the players lost compared to when the players won, in which case they are euphoric regardless. Thus this paper was interesting as a study of a combination of VR and storytelling.