Publications
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This page presents publications that resulted from research carried out at SREAL. Other publications, such as publications for individual research carried out prior to or after affiliation with SREAL, will be listed on that individual’s Publications page.
2026 |
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 | Matt Gottsacker; Yahya Hmaiti; Mykola Maslych; Hiroshi Furuya; Jasmine Joyce DeGuzman; Gerd Bruder; Gregory F. Welch; Joseph J. LaViola Jr. From One World to Another: Interfaces for Efficiently Transitioning Between Virtual Environments Proceedings Article Forthcoming In: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26), pp. 1-17, Forthcoming. @inproceedings{gottsacker2026worldswitch,Personal computers and handheld devices provide keyboard shortcuts and swipe gestures to enable users to efficiently switch between applications, whereas today's virtual reality (VR) systems do not. In this work, we present an exploratory study on user interface aspects to support efficient switching between worlds in VR. We created eight interfaces that afford previewing and selecting from the available virtual worlds, including methods using portals and worlds-in-miniature (WiMs). To evaluate these methods, we conducted a controlled within-subjects empirical experiment (N=22) where participants frequently transitioned between six different environments to complete an object collection task. Our quantitative and qualitative results show that WiMs supported rapid acquisition of high-level spatial information while searching and were deemed most efficient by participants while portals provided fast pre-orientation. Finally, we present insights into the applicability, usability, and effectiveness of the VR world switching methods we explored, and provide recommendations for their application and future context/world switching techniques and interfaces. |
 | Hiroshi Furuya; Jasmine Joyce DeGuzman; Zubin Datta Choudhary; Matt Gottsacker; Ahinya Alwin; Lee Lisle; Gerd Bruder; Gregory F Welch Effects of Multisensory Feedback and Real-World Priming on Presence and Copresence in Mixed Reality Drone Simulation Proceedings Article Forthcoming In: Proceedings of the 2026 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (IEEE VRW): 2nd Annual Workshop on Real and Virtual Spaces Influences (ReVISI), pp. 1-7, Forthcoming. @inproceedings{furuya-real-world-priming-26,Virtual reality (VR) experiences often rely on multisensory cues and realistic interactions to support convincing interpretations of virtual events and agents. This study examines how two factors, real-world priming and multisensory feedback, shape users’ perceptions of a virtual drone in a mixed-reality simulation. We conducted a mixed-design experiment where participants experienced either a physical drone flyover or no physical drone encounter, followed by audiovisual and multisensory drone flyovers in VR. Multisensory feedback increased co-presence and perceived realism specifically for participants who had encountered the real drone. In contrast, neither manipulation significantly affected standard presence measures. These findings highlight distinctions among presence-related constructs and suggest that recent real-world experiences can make certain multisensory cues be perceived as more realistic, even when they do not increase presence itself. |
2025 |
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 | Taylor Laird; Jasmine Joyce DeGuzman; Gerd Bruder; Carolina Cruz-Neira; Dirk Reiners You Have Arrive... Kind Of: Investigating the Limits of Undetectable Destination Displacement During Teleportation Proceedings Article In: Proceedings of the 2025 31st ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, pp. 1–11, 2025. @inproceedings{lairddeguzman2025you,Teleportation has become a popular locomotion method for virtual reality due to lesser demands on physical space and decreased levels of motion sickness compared to other methods. However, prior work has shown that these advantages come at the cost of impaired spatial perception and awareness, the extent to which is still largely unknown. In this work, we present a within-subjects study (N = 29) that explores the effects of teleportation on spatial perception by investigating how much humans can be unknowingly displaced relative to their intended destination during teleportation. After teleporting to the specified location, participants indicated the direction and magnitude (small, medium, large) of the perceived shift or rotation. Displacement from the target happened either as a translation in the forward- or strafe-axis, or a rotation about the up-axis at the intended target. Each displacement condition included eleven offsets that were repeated six times. Our results indicate points of subjective equality, which show a significant perceptual shift along the forward-direction, as well as detection thresholds, which indicate a comparatively wide range in which humans are unable to detect induced shifts. Furthermore, our results show that even if humans are able to detect these shifts, larger ones can be introduced before their magnitudes are rated as medium or large, which provides ample opportunities for interface designers who want to leverage these results in virtual reality. |
 | Hiroshi Furuya; Jasmine Joyce DeGuzman; Zubin Datta Choudhary; Matthew Gottsacker; Gerd Bruder; Gregory F. Welch How Does Presence Affect Trust in Simulated Autonomous Agents? Proceedings Article In: Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (IEEE VRW): 1st Annual Workshop on Real and Virtual Spaces Influences (ReVISI), pp. 1-2, 2025. @inproceedings{Furuya2025hc,Autonomous agents present important novel capabilities for a wide swath of applications like simulating interactions between humans and agents. Simulating these interactions in VR has become an important tool for evaluating the effects of agents on human behavior and performance, including human-agent trust. This position paper presents research opportunities in the use of real-world multi-modal feedback and real-world priming experiences may have on the validity of trust measurements taken from simulated human-agent interactions in VR. In addition, it presents a hypothetical experiment addressing research questions related to this topic. |
 | Tongyu Nie; Courtney Hutton Pospick; Ville Cantory; Danhua Zhang; Jasmine Joyce DeGuzman; Victoria Interrante; Isayas Berhe Adhanom; Evan Suma Rosenberg Peripheral Teleportation: A Rest Frame Design to Mitigate Cybersickness During Virtual Locomotion Journal Article In: IEEE Transaction on Visualization and Computer Graphics, pp. 1-10, 2025, (Best Paper Award, IEEE VR 2025). @article{nie2025pt,Mitigating cybersickness can improve the usability of virtual reality (VR) and increase its adoption. The most widely used technique, dynamic field-of-view (FOV) restriction, mitigates cybersickness by blacking out the peripheral region of the user’s FOV. However, this approach reduces the visibility of the virtual environment. We propose peripheral teleportation, a novel technique that creates a rest frame (RF) in the user's peripheral vision using content rendered from the current virtual environment. Specifically, the peripheral region is rendered by a pair of RF cameras whose transforms are updated by the user's physical motion. We apply alternating teleportations during translations, or snap turns during rotations, to the RF cameras to keep them close to the current viewpoint transformation. Consequently, the optical flow generated by RF cameras matches the user's physical motion, creating a stable peripheral view. In a between-subjects study (N=90), we compared peripheral teleportation with a traditional black FOV restrictor and an unrestricted control condition. The results showed that peripheral teleportation significantly reduced discomfort and enabled participants to stay immersed in the virtual environment for a longer duration of time. Overall, these findings suggest that peripheral teleportation is a promising technique that VR practitioners may consider adding to their cybersickness mitigation toolset. |
 | Jasmine Joyce DeGuzman; Kaori Hirano; Tabitha Peck; Alice Guth; Evan Suma Rosenberg; Tongyu Nie Reduction of Motion Complexity as an Objective Indicator of Cybersickness in Virtual Reality Proceedings Article In: Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR) 2025., pp. 1-9, 2025. @inproceedings{DeGuzman2025Reduction,Subjective measures, such as the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ), Fast Motion Sickness Questionnaire (FMS), and discomfort scores, are widely used to assess cybersickness, but they often interrupt the user experience and are prone to bias. To overcome these limitations, researchers have also investigated objective indicators, though some approaches, such as using physiological data, can be cumbersome and impractical. Based on the loss of complexity hypothesis, which suggests that certain conditions, such as disease or aging, can produce a reduction of complexity in physiological system dynamics, we conducted an initial investigation of the relationship between movement complexity and cybersickness. We analyzed motion tracking collected from two previous cybersickness studies using the d95 score, a complexity metric derived using principal component analysis. The results revealed a systematic relationship between movement complexity and cybersickness across both experiments. Higher discomfort scores were associated with a reduction in complexity, thereby supporting the loss of complexity hypothesis. Furthermore, the 9-DOF complexity measure, which includes both physical head movement and virtual camera motion, was a more sensitive indicator than the 6-DOF measure computed from physical movements alone. These initial findings suggest that movement complexity may be a useful objective indicator for future cybersickness research. |
2024 |
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 | Hiroshi Furuya; Zubin Choudhary; Jasmine Joyce DeGuzman; Matt Gottsacker; Gerd Bruder; Greg Welch Using Simulated Real-world Terrain in VR to Study Outdoor AR Topographic Map Interfaces Proceedings Article In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments (ICAT-EGVE 2024), Tsukuba, Japan, December 1-3, 2024, pp. 1-10, 2024. @inproceedings{Furuya2024topo,Augmented reality (AR) technology enables advanced integration of spatial information useful in a variety of important domains, including for reading topographic maps in the field. It is also important to understand how this technology may potentially affect spatial learning ability. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of virtual reality (VR) to conduct a human-subject study investigating the impacts of different simulated AR topographic map interface designs on spatial learning outcomes. Our results show that interfaces that encourage engagement with the interface instead of with the map and the environment result in fast task completion times but poor spatial learning. We also found participant preference for a novel interface design that assists users with map orientation without explicitly guiding the user through the task. |
*Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
