Brief Biography

After research­ing for a decade in the Virtual Reality Group of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany and work­ing as a post-doc­tor­al researcher at the Max Planck Institute, Vanderbilt University, and UC Santa Barbara, Bernhard joined SFU-SIAT in 2008, where he leads the iSpace Lab. His research com­bines mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary research approach­es and immer­sive vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments to inves­ti­gate how humans per­ceive, think, behave, and spa­tial­ly orient in real and vir­tu­al environments.

More specif­i­cal­ly he’s inter­est­ed in inves­ti­gat­ing: human spa­tial cognition/orientation/updating/navigation; Enabling robust and effort­less spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in VR and telep­res­ence; Self-motion per­cep­tion, illu­sions (“vec­tion”), inter­faces, and sim­u­la­tion; Designing for trans­for­ma­tive pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences using VR; Bio-respon­sive vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments (and many other things as you can see on the projects page).

Bernhard teach­es class­es on immer­sive environments/Virtual Reality, game design, human-com­put­er inter­ac­tion and cog­ni­tion, and quan­ti­ta­tive research meth­ods, and recent­ly designed a new 15-credit “Semester in Alternate Realities” course. He gave a TEDx talk on the poten­tial of Virtual Reality: “Could Virtual Reality make us more human?”.

Supervision

super­vised theses

Teaching

see above link

Currently-taught courses:

• IAT 445: Immersive Environments
• IAT 499: Graduation Project

Previously-taught courses:

• Semester in Alternate Realities
• IAT 802: Quantitative Research Methods and Design
• IAT312: Foundations of Game Design

Publications

• iSpaceLab pub­li­ca­tions page
• see also my google schol­ar page 
• my ACM pub­li­ca­tions can be down­loaded here.
• super­vised theses

Consulting

I can offer assis­tance and advice to researchers, devel­op­ers, com­pa­nies, and con­sumers who are con­cerned about usabil­i­ty, user expe­ri­ence, per­for­mance, and motion sick­ness in vir­tu­al or mixed real­i­ty. Please con­tact me if you are inter­est­ed or would like more information.

Research Interests & Expertise

My research inter­ests include:

• Human multi-modal spa­tial cog­ni­tion, spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion, spa­tial updat­ing, and navigation
• Enabling robust and effort­less spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments and telep­res­ence (e.g., con­fer­ence robots, drones) — e.g., through design­ing improved loco­mo­tion inter­faces and par­a­digms for 2D and 3D locomotion
• Self-motion per­cep­tion, illu­sions (“vec­tion”), and sim­u­la­tion; Multi-modal con­tri­bu­tions and interactions
• Multi-modal cue inte­gra­tion: Experimentation and the­o­ret­i­cal modeling
• Design and iter­a­tive eval­u­a­tion and improve­ment of per­cep­tu­al­ly ori­ent­ed, multi-modal human-com­put­er inter­faces and human-cen­tered, effec­tive vir­tu­al real­i­ty simulations
• Overview effect and other piv­otal expe­ri­ences and how to elicit them in VR
• Theory, design guide­lines, and VR expe­ri­ences sup­port­ing pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences — from self-tran­scen­dent and awe-inspir­ing expe­ri­ences to VR4Good and address­ing Climate Change
• Immersion and presence
• Brain-com­put­er inter­faces and biofeed­back (breath­ing, EEG…) for immer­sive, play­ful VR inter­ac­tion design to foster desire­able states (e.g., mind­ful­ness, relax­ation, overview effect, awe, self-tran­scen­dence, deeper con­nec­tion, piv­otal experiences).
• multi-modal, inter­ac­tive art/dance pieces and performances
• and more…

Please see my TEDxEastVan TEDx talk below and the diverse research topics and inter­ests for an overview of the dif­fer­ent projects and our vision on how we could use the increas­ing poten­tial of immer­sive VR (com­bined with other tech­nolo­gies and approach­es, includ­ing biosens­ing) to create mean­ing­ful pos­i­tive experiences.

[youtube cMGOftEi4UU]

Could Virtual Reality make us more human? | Bernhard Riecke | TEDxEastVan

Below is a short intro video explain­ing my orig­i­nal over­all research agenda and vision for the iSpace lab (from 2011 — since then we added a lot of addi­tion­al research topics and inter­ests and projects). See also the Vision sub­page for details.

Interested in Joining the iSpace Team?

I’m cur­rent­ly look­ing for bright and moti­vat­ed MSc and PhD stu­dents to join our iSpace lab. See the Contact & Join Us sub­page for details. We don’t cur­rent­ly have fund­ing for PostDocs, but I’d be happy to help with fund­ing appli­ca­tions if you’re interested.

Projects

Novel Cybersickness Measures and Countermeasures BoF

Novel Cybersickness Measures and Countermeasures:  Birds of a Feather ses­sion at SIGGRAPH 2022   Interested in con­nect­ing & join­ing? If you’re inter­est­ed in con­nect­ing to others engaged or inter­est­ed in the Novel Cybersickness Measures and Countermeasures, you could join our online inter­ac­tive Birds of a Feather ses­sion at Siggraph 2022, on Fri Aug 05, 10 am-11:30 am Log in through h…

By bern­hard riecke, rose rouhani & frank steinicke Read more

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Telepresence

How can we improve telep­res­ence sys­tems (such as con­fer­ence robots) so they are not just “zoom on wheels” but actu­al­ly allow users to feel more present and nav­i­gate more easily around remote envi­ron­ments?” FeetBack: Augmenting Robotic Telepresence with Haptic Feedback on the Feet Telepresence robots allow people to par­tic­i­pate in remote spaces, yet they can be dif­fi­cult to manoeu­vre with people …

By bern­hard riecke, carman neustaedter, bren­nan jones, wolf­gang stuer­zlinger, ernst krui­jff, jens maiero, ivan aguilar, rob lin­de­man, ufuk batmaz, alireza mogharrab, ashu adhikari & yasamin hesh­mat Read more

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HyperJump flying to combat motion sickness

HyperJumping in Virtual Vancouver: Combating Motion Sickness by Merging Teleporting and Continuous VR Locomotion in an Embodied Hands-Free VR Flying Paradigm Motion sick­ness, unin­tu­itive nav­i­ga­tion, and lim­it­ed agency are crit­i­cal issues in VR/XR imped­ing wide-spread adop­tion and enjoy­able user expe­ri­ences. To tackle these chal­lenges, we present HyperJump, a novel VR inter­face merg­ing advantages …

By bern­hard riecke, david clement, markus von der heyde, ashu adhikari, denise ques­nel, daniel zielasko, ivan aguilar, ken­neth karthik & ernst krui­jff, Read more

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Design Strategies for Genuine Connection

There is a promi­nent inter­est in the poten­tial of tech­nol­o­gy for medi­at­ing social con­nec­tion, with a wealth of sys­tems designed to foster the feel­ing of con­nec­tion between strangers, friends, and family. In this project, we are explor­ing this design land­scape to derive a tran­si­tion­al def­i­n­i­tion of medi­at­ed gen­uine con­nec­tion and design strate­gies employed by artists and design­ers to sup­port the f…

By kate­ri­na stepano­va, john desnoy­ers stew­art, Kristina Höök & bern­hard riecke Read more

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Concurrent locomotion and interaction in VR

Can more embod­ied and lean­ing-based inter­faces help sup­port con­cur­rent loco­mo­tion and inter­ac­tion in VR when phys­i­cal walk­ing isn’t fea­si­ble? Physical walk­ing is often con­sid­ered the gold stan­dard for VR travel when­ev­er fea­si­ble. However, espe­cial­ly for larger-scale vir­tu­al travel the free-space walk­ing areas are typ­i­cal­ly too small, thus requir­ing hand­held con­trollers to nav­i­gate, which …

By bern­hard riecke, abra­ham hashemi­an, ashu adhikari, ivan aguilar, ernst krui­jff & markus von der heyde Read more

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Star-Stuff: a way for the universe to know itself

Available on Oculus AppLab at https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3367089710082568/ Inspired by Carl Sagan, Star-Stuff: a way for the uni­verse to know itself is an immer­sive expe­ri­ence cre­at­ed to remind imm­er­sants of their fun­da­men­tal con­nec­tion to human­i­ty and the Universe. This hybrid VR art­work brings two people togeth­er remote­ly or in a co-present instal­la­tion. In both cases, the …

By john desnoy­ers stewart Read more

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SIRIUS - Virtual Earthgazing to mitigate effects of sensory isolation

SIRIUS (Scientific International Research in Unique Terrestrial Station) is a series of on-land iso­la­tion exper­i­ments mod­el­ling long-term space­flight in order to assess the psy­chophys­i­o­log­i­cal effects of iso­la­tion on a crew and pre­pare for long-dura­tion space­flights, such as a trip to Mars. An 8‑month-long iso­la­tion study com­menced in Moscow on Nov 4^th, 2021, where a crew of 6 people (from Roscosm…

By noah miller, kate­ri­na stepano­va, john desnoy­ers stew­art, ashu adhikari, bern­hard riecke, patrick pen­nefa­ther, alex kitson, denise ques­nel & alexan­der stahn Read more

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Leaning-based interfaces improve ground-based VR locomotion

Hand-held VR con­trollers are widely avail­able and used, how­ev­er they can con­tribute to unwant­ed side-effects, such as increased cyber­sick­ness, dis­ori­en­ta­tion, and cog­ni­tive load. Here, we show how a lean­ing-based inter­faces (“HeadJoystick”) can help improve user expe­ri­ence, usability,and per­for­mance in diverse ground-based nav­i­ga­tion includ­ing three com­ple­men­tary tasks: reach-the-target, follow-th…

By bern­hard riecke, abra­ham hashemi­an, ashu adhikari, ivan aguilar, ernst krui­jff & markus von der heyde Read more

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Virtual Transcendent Dream

Flying dreams have the poten­tial to evoke a feel­ing of empow­er­ment (or self-effi­ca­cy, con­fi­dence in our abil­i­ty to suc­ceed) and self-tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ence (STE), which have been shown to con­tribute to an individual’s over­all well-being. However, these excep­tion­al dream­ing expe­ri­ences remain dif­fi­cult to induce at will. Inspired by the poten­tial of Virtual Reality (VR) to sup­port pro­found emoti…

By pinyao liu, bern­hard riecke, kate­ri­na stepano­va & alex kitson Read more

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Breath of Light

One must first come to know, through observ­ing one­self — just what one does with breath­ing. — Elsa Gindler Breath of light is a gen­er­a­tive inter­ac­tive instal­la­tion, exhib­it­ed at the 13^th Shanghai Biennale. The instal­la­tion aims to foster a feel­ing of con­nec­tion and aware­ness through the process of breath­ing syn­chro­niza­tion. Each of the two par­tic­i­pants gen­er­ates their own light with their breat…

By pinyao liu, bern­hard riecke, kate­ri­na stepano­va & john desnoy­ers stewart Read more

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Integrating Continuous and Teleporting VR Locomotion into a Seamless "HyperJump" Paradigm

Here we pro­pose a hybrid inter­face that allows user to seam­less­ly tran­si­tion between a slow ‘con­tin­u­ous’ mode and a fast ‘hyper­jump’ mode. The inter­face aims to main­tain the immer­sion, pres­ence, accu­ra­cy and spa­tial updat­ing of con­tin­u­ous loco­mo­tion while adding the travel effi­cien­cy and min­i­miz­ing the cyber­sick­ness. Continuous loco­mo­tion in VR pro­vides unin­ter­rupt­ed opti­cal flow, which mimics re…

By ashu adhikari, alexan­der bretin, daniel zielasko, ken­neth karthik, markus von der heyde, ernst krui­jff & bern­hard riecke Read more

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VR Locomotion Interfaces Survey: How to Move in VR?

There are a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ent VR loco­mo­tion inter­faces out there, all with their own pros and cons. In fact, far too many to all inves­ti­gate in one behav­iour­al study — so let’s ask diverse VR experts for their opin­ion… Interested in sup­port­ing research on VR loco­mo­tion inter­faces and help­ing the VR com­mu­ni­ty better under­stand the pros and cons of dif­fer­ent inter­faces? We cre­at­ed a surve…

By bern­hard riecke, daniel zielasko, ivan aguilar & ernst krui­jff Read more

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FaceHaptics: Robot Arm based Versatile Facial Haptics for Immersive Environments

Beyond audio­vi­su­al cues in VR: Using an HMD-mount­ed robot arm for ver­sa­tile facial hap­tics Abstract: FaceHaptics is a novel haptic dis­play based on a robot arm attached to a head-mount­ed vir­tu­al real­i­ty dis­play. It pro­vides local­ized, multi-direc­tion­al and mov­able haptic cues in the form of wind, warmth, moving and single-point touch events and water spray to ded­i­cat­ed parts of the face …

By ernst krui­jff, bern­hard riecke, Alexander Wilberz, Dominik Leschtschow, Christina Trepkowksi & Jens Maiero Read more

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BioSpaceVR

Experience space like never before: An awe-inspir­ing VR expe­ri­ence that takes place in space where the Sun and stars react to biosen­sors. BioSpaceVR seeks to pro­vide a vir­tu­al self-tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ence. Self-tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ences are char­ac­ter­ized by the feel­ing of unity with others and the world. Our project is a bio-respon­sive VR expe­ri­ence that cre­ates an almost child­like expe­ri­ence of …

By Zoe Temple Sandison, Bianca Pricop, bern­hard riecke, alex kitson & john desnoy­ers stewart Read more

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Immersive Installation for Creative Expression and Public Performance: Transcending Perception

  Artist Statement Transcending Perception is an inter­ac­tive Virtual Reality (VR) instal­la­tion devel­oped by John Desnoyers-Stewart that allows par­tic­i­pants to col­lab­o­rate in the cre­ative, impro­vi­sa­tion­al pro­duc­tion of mul­ti­sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences. Bodies and space are trans­formed into instru­ments which trans­late pres­ence into per­for­mance. This instal­la­tion reminds par­tic­i­pants that they are cre…

By john desnoy­ers stew­art, shan­non cuyk­endall, alex kitson, bern­hard riecke & thecla schiphorst Read more

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Body RemiXer

Extending Bodies to Stimulate Social Connection in an Immersive Installation Body RemiXer con­nects bodies through move­ment. It is an expe­ri­en­tial pro­jec­tion based Virtual Reality instal­la­tion that explores novel forms of embod­ied inter­ac­tion between mul­ti­ple par­tic­i­pants where their bodies mix into a shared embod­ied rep­re­sen­ta­tion pro­duc­ing a play­ful inter­ac­tion that aims to sup­port the feel­ing o…

By john desnoy­ers stew­art, kate­ri­na stepano­va, bern­hard riecke & patrick pen­nefa­ther Read more

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Lucid Loop: A Virtual Deep Learning Biofeedback System for Lucid Dreaming Practice

Can VR and neu­ro­feed­back deep learn­ing art help enhance atten­tion and lucid dream­ing prac­tice? Lucid dream­ing, know­ing one is dream­ing while dream­ing, is an impor­tant tool for explor­ing con­scious­ness and bring­ing aware­ness to dif­fer­ent aspects of life. We cre­at­ed a system called Lucid Loop: a vir­tu­al real­i­ty expe­ri­ence where one can prac­tice lucid aware­ness via neu­ro­feed­back. Visuals are creativ…

By alex kitson, reese muntean, bern­hard riecke & steve diPaola Read more

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Connecting through JeL – bio-responsive VR for interpersonal synchronization

Can a bio-respon­sive gen­er­a­tive art instal­la­tion foster inter­per­son­al syn­chro­niza­tion and con­nec­tion? JeL is a bio-respon­sive, immer­sive, inter­ac­tive, gen­er­a­tive art instal­la­tion designed to encour­age phys­i­o­log­i­cal syn­chro­niza­tion between the imm­er­sants. In this project, we will be explor­ing how novel forms of inter­ac­tion can be includ­ed in immer­sive tech­nol­o­gy to foster the feel­ing of connection…

By kate­ri­na stepano­va, john desnoy­ers stew­art, alex kitson, bern­hard riecke, philippe pasquier & patrick pen­nefa­ther Read more

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Embodied & Intuitive Flying for VR, Gaming, and TeleOperation

Flying has been a dream for mankind for mil­lenia — but flying inter­faces for VR, gaming, and tele­op­er­a­tion (e.g., drones) typ­i­cal­ly rely on cum­ber­some double-joy­stick­/gamepads and do not allow for intu­itive and embod­ied flying expe­ri­ences. Here, we devel­op low-cost embod­ied flying inter­faces that adapt lean­ing-based motion cueing par­a­digms thus free­ing up hands for addi­tion­al tasks beyond just na…

By bern­hard riecke, abra­ham hashemi­an, ashu adhikari, ivan aguilar, noah miller, alexan­der bretin, matin lot­faliei & ernst krui­jff, Read more

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NaviBoard: Efficiently Navigating Virtual Environments

Here we pro­pose a novel and cost-effec­tive setup of a lean­ing-based inter­face (“NaviBoard”) that allows people to effi­cient­ly nav­i­gate vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments — with per­for­mance levels match­ing the gold stan­dard of free-space walk­ing, with­out any increase in motion sick­ness Abstract Walking has always been the most common loco­mo­tion mode for humans in the real world. As a result, it has also been co…

By thinh nguyen vo, bern­hard riecke, wolf­gang stuer­zlinger, duc minh pham, ernst krui­jff, noah miller & ashu adhikari Read more

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3D User Interfaces Course

Siggraph 2018: 3D User Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Games: 3D Selection, Manipulation, and Spatial Navigation 3‑hour Course Presented at Siggraph 2018 In this course, we will take a detailed look at dif­fer­ent topics in the field of 3D user inter­faces (3DUIs) for Virtual Reality and Gaming. With the advent of Augmented and Virtual Reality in numer­ous appli­ca­tion areas, the need and interest…

By bern­hard riecke, joe lavi­o­la & ernst krui­jff Read more

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VR/MR/AR 4 Good: Creating with a Purpose

Interested in con­nect­ing & join­ing? If you’re inter­est­ed in con­nect­ing to others engaged or inter­est­ed in the xR4Good field, you could join the xR4Good face­book group, or fill out this online signup sheet and state what you’re inter­est­ed in Introduction Over the past five years, we have seen aware­ness and cre­ation of Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented Reality (VR/MR/AR or, the ‘immer­sive realit…

By bern­hard riecke, denise ques­nel & patrick pen­nefa­ther Read more

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Connected through "AWE": creating immersive experiences for social connection

Do you get enough “awe” in your life? In our busy day-to-day lives, we often take our expe­ri­ences for grant­ed. While we have the tech­nol­o­gy to con­nect with one anoth­er, like smart phones, we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly get out­side with nature, or stargaze. Such activ­i­ties may con­sist of common awe-inspir­ing moments, and we now under­stand that feel­ing awe is asso­ci­at­ed with all sorts of social and well…

By bern­hard riecke, denise ques­nel, kate­ri­na stepano­va, alex kitson, ivan aguilar, john desnoy­ers stew­art, noah miller, pinyao liu & patrick pen­nefa­ther Read more

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Navigation Interface Tutorial

Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice First ver­sion held at IEEE VR 2017, Sunday, March 19, 1:30pm — 5:00pm, updat­ed vari­ants of the tuto­r­i­al will be pre­sent­ed at ACM Chi 2018 (slides) and IEEE VR 2018. At The Spatial Cognition 2018 con­fer­ence we will present a new tuto­r­i­al on Spatial Navigation Interfaces for Immersive Environments focus­ing more on the…

By ernst krui­jff & bern­hard riecke Read more

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Gamified Research

Gamifying Research — Researchifying Games While tra­di­tion­al exper­i­men­tal par­a­digms offer tight stim­u­lus con­trol and repeata­bil­i­ty, then tend to be a bit boring and removed from many real-world sit­u­a­tions, which can limit real-world trans­fer­abil­i­ty of results. How can we bring togeth­er the method­olog­i­cal strenghs of research with the intrin­sic moti­va­tion of play­ful­ness and gaming? The …

By bern­hard riecke, thinh nguyen vo, abra­ham hashemi­an, noah miller & ashu adhikari Read more

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Navigational Search in VR: Do Reference Frames Help?

Would the rec­tan­gu­lar ref­er­ence frame of a CAVE help to reduce dis­ori­en­ta­tion and improve nav­i­ga­tion per­for­mance in VR? Here, we show that simply pro­vid­ing the rec­tan­gu­lar ref­er­ence frame of a room (as a simple wire­frame cuboid), but not a CAVE improved nav­i­ga­tion­al search per­for­mance.   Despite recent advances in vir­tu­al real­i­ty, loco­mo­tion in a vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment is still restrict­ed becau…

By bern­hard riecke, thinh nguyen vo, wolf­gang stuer­z­lin­er & duc minh pham Read more

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Virtual Earthgazing - towards an overview effect in Virtual Reality

How can we use immer­sive VR to give people piv­otal pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences with­out having to send them out into space?   “We went to the Moon as tech­ni­cians, we returned as human­i­tar­i­ans” reflect­ed Edgar Mitchell after his space flight. This describes the overview effect – a pro­found awe-inspir­ing expe­ri­ence of seeing Earth from space result­ing in a cog­ni­tive shift in world­view, le…

By bern­hard riecke, kate­ri­na stepano­va, denise ques­nel, alex kitson, ivan aguilar & mir­jana prpa Read more

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Lean and Elegant Motion Cueing in VR

How do we best design loco­mo­tion inter­faces for VR that pro­vide “enough” phys­i­cal motion cues (vestibular/proprioceptive) while still being effec­tive, afford­able, com­pact, and safe? Despite amaz­ing progress in com­put­er graph­ics and VR dis­plays, most afford­able and room-sized VR loco­mo­tion inter­faces pro­vide only little phys­i­cal motion cues (e.g., vestibu­lar & pro­pri­o­cep­tive cues). To provide…

By bern­hard riecke, ernst krui­jff, daniel feuereis­sen, alex kitson, tim­o­fey grechkin, markus von der heyde, jake freiberg, abra­ham hashemi­an, thinh nguyen vo & kate­ri­na stepanova Read more

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Pulse Breath Water

Pulse Breath Water is an immer­sive vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment manip­u­lat­ed by the pulse of a participant’s breath that pro­vokes and chal­lenges the inter­ac­tion between a user and the sub­stan­tial ele­ment of the envi­ron­ment: water. The system “senses” the par­tic­i­pant, while the participant’s breath­ing feeds the system. The process is a sym­bi­ot­ic play between inter­nal human process­es [biosens­ing t…

By mir­jana prpa, kivanc tatar, bern­hard riecke & philippe pasquier Read more

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Lost Spirit

Flight after death: Lost Spirit is an expe­ri­en­tial-based Virtual Reality (VR) game where­by the player is trans­port­ed into the spirit world as they take flight to the after­life. Experience flight, weight­less­ness, and wonder. In Lost Spirit, you are stuck in the limbo — a world between the living and the dead. You will drift and fly through dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments, each cor­re­spond­ing to different…

By alex kitson, xin tong, bern­hard riecke, david frac­chia, diane gro­ma­la & mahsoo salimi, Read more

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Immersive & Embodied Teleoperation Interfaces

Developing vir­tu­al inter­faces for embod­ied tele-oper­a­tion and loco­mo­tion. How can we best design and imple­ment an embod­ied telep­res­ence system for tele-robot­ics, so we can safely explore remote, hard-to-reach, or poten­tial­ly haz­ardous areas or sit­u­a­tions? The goal of the “TeleSpider” project is to design and imple­ment a telep­res­ence system where users can remote­ly oper­ate a robot­ic spid…

By bern­hard riecke, alex kitson, abra­ham hashemi­an, markus von der heyde, kate­ri­na stepano­va, amber choo & derek chen Read more

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state.scape: EEG-based Responsive Art Installation

State.scape: Using EEG-based brain-com­put­er inter­faces for a respon­sive art instal­la­tion State.scape is an inter­ac­tive instal­la­tion in which audio-visu­als are gen­er­at­ed from users affec­tive states (engage­ment, excite­ment, and med­i­ta­tion). The instal­la­tion relies on a brain-com­put­er inter­face based vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment and soni­fi­ca­tion, which both served as a plat­form for the explo­ration of users…

By mir­jana prpa, sve­tozar miucin & bern­hard riecke Read more

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Biofeedback in VR - SOLAR

Resonance in Virtual Environments: hack­ing biofeed­back for alter­ing user’s affec­tive states How can we com­bine immer­sive vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments (VE) with biofeed­back and gam­i­fi­ca­tion to foster relax­ation, de-stress­ing and med­i­ta­tive states? That is, instead of increas­ing sen­so­ry over­load, can we use the immer­sive and affec­tive poten­tial of VE and gam­i­fi­ca­tion to assist espe­cial­ly novice meditato…

By mir­jana prpa, karen cochrane & bern­hard riecke Read more

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Motion Seats for VR

Using motion seats for enhanc­ing loco­mo­tion and immer­sion in VR How can we pro­vide a “moving expe­ri­ence” through VR with­out having to use a full-scale motion plat­form? Could a com­pact and rel­a­tive­ly low-cost “motion seat” pro­vide some of the same ben­e­fits, thus reduc­ing cost, com­plex­i­ty, space & safety require­ments? Despite con­sid­er­able advances in Simulation and Virtual Real…

By bern­hard riecke, alex kitson, abra­ham hashemi­an & markus von der heyde Read more

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VR in Architecture Design & Review

How can we use immer­sive Virtual Reality and embod­ied loco­mo­tion inter­faces to to design more  cost- and space-effi­cient solu­tions for effec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion of archi­tec­tur­al designs and ideas?  Our over­all goal is to iter­a­tive­ly design and eval­u­ate a novel embod­ied VR system that enables users to quick­ly, intu­itive­ly, and pre­cise­ly posi­tion their vir­tu­al view­point in 3D space…

By bern­hard riecke, jake freiberg & alex kitson Read more

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Transition into VR: TransLocation

How can we ease users’ tran­si­tion from the real sur­round­ings into the vir­tu­al world? Many of today’s vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) setups are very much focused on tech­ni­cal aspects rather then the ben­e­fits of a coher­ent user expe­ri­ence. This work explores the idea of enhanc­ing the VR expe­ri­ence with a tran­si­tion phase. On a phys­i­cal level, this tran­si­tion offers the user a mean­ing­ful metaphor for en…

By bern­hard riecke, daniel sproll, jake freiberg & tim­o­fey grechkin Read more

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Cross-Disciplinary 'Immersion' Framework

Describing media as ‘immer­sive’ is ambigu­ous.  From debil­i­tat­ing addic­tion to ther­a­peu­tic relief, media engage­ment holds a clear dual­i­ty in its effect on human­i­ty… Without an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of “immer­sion”, why do we allow this con­cept to be so read­i­ly invoked in dis­cus­sions of books, visual art, video games, vir­tu­al real­i­ty sys­tems and more? While “immer­sion” into tradit…

By jay vid­yarthi & bern­hard riecke Read more

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The Tabletop Makerspace

The table­top Makerspace was a Mitacs intern­ship project con­duct­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Science World. A set of class­room tools was devel­oped to sup­port ‘Maker’ activ­i­ties at the museum. The tools includ­ed a home-built 3D print­er and a set of elec­tron­ics kits for work­ing with the Arduino micro­con­troller. An intro­duc­tion to elec­tron­ics work­shop was devel­oped with local makers and Science World …

By andrew milne & bern­hard riecke Read more

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Gyroxus Gaming Chair for Motion Cueing in VR

Can self-motion per­cep­tion in vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) be enhanced by pro­vid­ing afford­able, user-pow­ered min­i­mal motion cueing? Introduction & Motivation:  Can self-motion per­cep­tion in vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) be enhanced by pro­vid­ing afford­able, user-pow­ered min­i­mal motion cueing? To inves­ti­gate this, we com­pared the effect of dif­fer­ent inter­ac­tion and motion par­a­digms on onset laten­cy and intensi…

By bern­hard riecke & daniel feuereis­sen Read more

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Embodied Self-Motion Illusions in VR

How can we pro­vide humans with a believ­able sen­sa­tion of being in and moving through com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed envi­ron­ments (like VR, com­put­er games, or movies) with­out the need for costly and cum­ber­some motion plat­forms or large free-space walk­ing areas? That is, how can we “cheat intel­li­gent­ly” by pro­vid­ing a com­pelling, embod­ied self-motion illu­sion (“vec­tion”) with­out the need for full phys­i­cal mo…

By bern­hard riecke, daniel feuereis­sen, tim­o­thy mcna­ma­ra & john rieser Read more

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Dynamic Visual Cues for Spatial Updating

Why is object recog­ni­tion from novel view­points facil­i­tat­ed if not the object rotates, but the observ­er moves around the object? According to the pre­vail­ing opin­ion, “spa­tial updat­ing” of our mental spa­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tion is sup­posed to be the under­ly­ing process. Here, we pro­vide first evi­dence that chal­lenge this notion, in that dynam­ic visual cues alone might be suf­fi­cient or at least contrib…

By bern­hard riecke & wataru ter­amo­to Read more

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Navigational Search in VR: Do we need to walk?

Do we need full phys­i­cal motions for effec­tive nav­i­ga­tion through Virtual Environments? Recent results sug­gest that trans­la­tions might not be as impor­tant as pre­vi­ous­ly believed, which could enable us to reduce over­all sim­u­la­tion effort and cost Physical rota­tions and trans­la­tions are the basic con­stituents of nav­i­ga­tion behav­ior, yet there is mixed evi­dence about their rel­a­tive impor­tance for co…

By bern­hard riecke, bobby boden­heimer, daniel feuereis­sen, tim­o­thy mcna­ma­ra & john rieser Read more

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Spatial Cognition in VR vs. real world

Comparing spa­tial perception/cognition in real versus immer­sive vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments: it does­n’t com­pare! Virtual real­i­ty (VR) is increas­ing­ly used in psy­cho­log­i­cal research and appli­ca­tions – but does VR really afford nat­ur­al human spa­tial perception/cognition, which is a pre­req­ui­site for effec­tive spa­tial behav­ior? Using judg­ment of rel­a­tive direc­tion (JRD) tasks, Riecke & McNamara (Psychonom…

By bern­hard riecke, lonnie hast­ings, tim­o­thy mcna­ma­ra & dinara moura Read more

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iSpaceMecha

Collaboration between the iSpace lab at SIAT and Mechatronics Undergraduate Interns to design and build a unique, vir­tu­al real­i­ty multi-modal motion sim­u­la­tor The iSpace pro­gram is cen­tered on inves­ti­gat­ing what con­sti­tutes effec­tive, robust, and intu­itive human spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion and behav­iour. This fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge will be applied to design novel, more effec­tive human-com­put­er interfaces …

By bern­hard riecke, markus von der heyde, tim­o­fey grechkin, daniel feuereis­sen & salvar sig­ur­dar­son Read more

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Path Integration in 3D

Switching Spatial Reference Frames for Yaw and Pitch Navigation: We’re used to nav­i­gat­ing on the ground plane, and have devel­oped spe­cif­ic strate­gies to do so. How do these change if we move in a ver­ti­cal plane (roller-coast­er-like, includ­ing head over heels motions)? Can we still main­tain ori­en­ta­tion and remem­ber where we came from, even though such upwards or down­wards (pitch) motions are less …

By bern­hard riecke & klaus gra­mann Read more

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Auditory Navigation Displays

Can spa­tial audi­to­ry cues enable us to remain ori­ent­ed while nav­i­gat­ing real or vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments? Non-visual nav­i­ga­tion inter­faces are cru­cial for the blind, who suffer great reduc­tions in mobil­i­ty because of the dif­fi­cul­ty of nav­i­gat­ing new envi­ron­ments. Sighted users may also ben­e­fit from these types of dis­plays when they are nav­i­gat­ing but can’t see the screen of their mobile device b…

By andrew milne, bern­hard riecke & alissa antle Read more

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Sympathetic Guitar

Do humans response social­ly to abstract, expres­sive human-com­put­er inter­faces? To inter­act with the Sympathetic Guitar is to use a famil­iar and com­fort­able Western musi­cal inter­face to feel an instant con­nec­tion to musi­cal cul­ture and style of the East.  The pro­to­type senses gui­tarists’ hand motions and per­for­mance dynam­ics to aug­ment a stan­dard clas­si­cal guitar with a dig­i­tal drone res…

By jay vid­yarthi, bern­hard riecke & alissa antle Read more

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Spatial Updating With(out) Physical Motions?

How impor­tant are phys­i­cal motions for effec­tive spa­tial ori­en­ta­tion in VR? Most vir­tu­al real­i­ty sim­u­la­tors have a  seri­ous flaw: Users tend to get easily lost and dis­ori­ent­ed as they nav­i­gate. According to the pre­vail­ing opin­ion, this is because phys­i­cal motion cues are absolute­ly required for stay­ing ori­ent­ed while moving. In this study, we inves­ti­gat­ed how phys­i­cal motion cues contribute …

By bern­hard riecke, markus von der heyde, salvar sig­ur­dar­son, daniel feuereis­sen, daniel sproll, andrew milne, alex kitson & kate­ri­na stepanova Read more

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Sonic Cradle

Sonic Cradle sus­pends the body is a com­plete­ly dark cham­ber which encour­ages expe­ri­ences com­pa­ra­ble to mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion.  Users com­pose peace­ful sound­scapes in real-time using only their breath­ing. [vimeo 35764652] Introduction and demo of the Sonic Cradle Sonic Cradle is a relax­ing human-com­put­er inter­ac­tion par­a­digm designed to foster med­i­ta­tive atten­tion­al pat­terns.  The cur­rent p…

By jay vid­yarthi, bern­hard riecke, diane gro­ma­la, alex kitson, mir­jana prpa & denise ques­nel Read more

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