The H.I.V.E. (Huge Immersive Virtual Environment) is a joint research project between the departments of Psychology, Computer Science, and Systems Analysis at Miami University. [1] The project is funded by a grant from the U.S. Army Research Office and is currently the world's largest virtual environment in terms of navigable floor area (currently over 1200m2). The goal of the research project is to conduct experiments in human spatial cognition.
The H.I.V.E. platform consists of several components, including:
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment, education and business. VR is one of the key technologies in the reality-virtuality continuum. As such, it is different from other digital visualization solutions, such as augmented virtuality and augmented reality.
Telepresence is the appearance or sensation of a person being present at a place other than their true location, via telerobotics or video.
A cave automatic virtual environment is an immersive virtual reality environment where projectors are directed to between three and six of the walls of a room-sized cube. The name is also a reference to the allegory of the Cave in Plato's Republic in which a philosopher contemplates perception, reality, and illusion.
Mixed reality (MR) is a term used to describe the merging of a real-world environment and a computer-generated one. Physical and virtual objects may co-exist in mixed reality environments and interact in real time.
Wave field synthesis (WFS) is a spatial audio rendering technique, characterized by creation of virtual acoustic environments. It produces artificial wavefronts synthesized by a large number of individually driven loudspeakers from elementary waves. Such wavefronts seem to originate from a virtual starting point, the virtual sound source. Contrary to traditional phantom sound sources, the localization of WFS established virtual sound sources does not depend on the listener's position. Like as a genuine sound source the virtual source remains at fixed starting point.
In virtual reality (VR), immersion is the perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total environment.
A projection augmented model is an element sometimes employed in virtual reality systems. It consists of a physical three-dimensional model onto which a computer image is projected to create a realistic looking object. Importantly, the physical model is the same geometric shape as the object that the PA model depicts.
In computing, 3D interaction is a form of human-machine interaction where users are able to move and perform interaction in 3D space. Both human and machine process information where the physical position of elements in the 3D space is relevant.
Roberta "Bobby Lou" Klatzky is a Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). She specializes in human perception and cognition, particularly relating to visual and non-visual perception and representation of space and geometric shapes. Klatzky received a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1968 and a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University in 1972. She has done extensive research on human haptic and visual object recognition, navigation under visual and nonvisual guidance, and perceptually guided action.
Crystal River Engineering Inc. was an American technology company best known for their pioneering work in HRTF based real-time binaural, or 3D sound processing hardware and software. The company was founded in 1989 by Scott Foster after he received a contract from NASA to create the audio component of VIEW, a virtual reality based training simulator for astronauts. Crystal River Engineering was acquired by Aureal Semiconductor in 1996.
A networked music performance or network musical performance is a real-time interaction over a computer network that enables musicians in different locations to perform as if they were in the same room. These interactions can include performances, rehearsals, improvisation or jamming sessions, and situations for learning such as master classes. Participants may be connected by "high fidelity multichannel audio and video links" as well as MIDI data connections and specialized collaborative software tools. While not intended to be a replacement for traditional live stage performance, networked music performance supports musical interaction when co-presence is not possible and allows for novel forms of music expression. Remote audience members and possibly a conductor may also participate.
Immerse Learning is an English school based in an Online Virtual World. It is the first school that teaches exclusively online in a virtual environment; students and teachers use avatars to navigate the environment and take part in lessons. Lessons are also completely contextual, which is in direct contradiction to the traditional classroom system.
Embodied cognition is the concept suggesting that many features of cognition are shaped by the state and capacities of the organism. The cognitive features include a wide spectrum of cognitive functions, such as perception biases, memory recall, comprehension and high-level mental constructs and performance on various cognitive tasks. The bodily aspects involve the motor system, the perceptual system, the bodily interactions with the environment (situatedness), and the assumptions about the world built the functional structure of organism's brain and body.
In cognitive psychology, spatial cognition is the acquisition, organization, utilization, and revision of knowledge about spatial environments. It is most about how animals, including humans, behave within space and the knowledge they built around it, rather than space itself. These capabilities enable individuals to manage basic and high-level cognitive tasks in everyday life. Numerous disciplines work together to understand spatial cognition in different species, especially in humans. Thereby, spatial cognition studies also have helped to link cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Scientists in both fields work together to figure out what role spatial cognition plays in the brain as well as to determine the surrounding neurobiological infrastructure.
The High-performance Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE) is a distributed computing environment used for healthcare-IT and biological research, including analysis of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data, preclinical, clinical and post market data, adverse events, metagenomic data, etc. Currently it is supported and continuously developed by US Food and Drug Administration, George Washington University, and by DNA-HIVE, WHISE-Global and Embleema. HIVE currently operates fully functionally within the US FDA supporting wide variety (+60) of regulatory research and regulatory review projects as well as for supporting MDEpiNet medical device postmarket registries. Academic deployments of HIVE are used for research activities and publications in NGS analytics, cancer research, microbiome research and in educational programs for students at GWU. Commercial enterprises use HIVE for oncology, microbiology, vaccine manufacturing, gene editing, healthcare-IT, harmonization of real-world data, in preclinical research and clinical studies.
There are many applications of virtual reality.Such as education, architectural and urban design, digital marketing and activism, engineering and robotics, entertainment, virtual communities, fine arts, healthcare and clinical therapies, heritage and archaeology, occupational safety, social science and psychology.
Ruth Conroy Dalton is a British architect, author and Professor of Architecture at Northumbria University. She has authored or contributed to more than 200 publications. She is an expert in space syntax analysis, pedestrian movement and wayfinding and a world-leading authority on the overlap between architecture and spatial cognition.
Immersive learning is a learning method with students being immersed into a virtual dialogue, the feeling of presence is used as an evidence of getting immersed. The virtual dialogue can be created by two ways, the usage of virtual technics, and the narrative like reading a book. The motivations of using virtual reality (VR) for teaching contain: learning efficiency, time problems, physical inaccessibility, limits due to a dangerous situation and ethical problems.
The 'doorway effect' or 'location updating effect' is a replicable psychological phenomenon characterized by short-term memory loss when passing through a doorway or moving from one location to another. We tend to forget items of recent significance immediately after crossing a boundary and often forget what we were thinking about or planning on doing upon entering a different room. Research suggests that this phenomenon occurs both at literal boundaries and metaphorical boundaries.
Timothy P. McNamara is a psychologist currently serving as the Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University. He heads the Spatial Memory & Navigation Lab
Waller, D., Bachmann, E., Hodgson, E., & Beall, A. C. (2007). The HIVE: A Huge Immersive Virtual Environment for research in spatial cognition. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 835–843.