[This story from Buzzfeed reports on and amusingly captures the variety of medium-as-social-actor presence responses to a Twitter post featuring a picture of a delivery robot on a walking trail in the woods near Northampton, England last Sunday morning. See the original story (and the full Twitter conversation) for more responses. Coverage in Futurism provides context, describing the incident as “a rather adorable reminder of the helplessness of increasingly ubiquitous autonomous machines” and noting that

“This poor little bot is far from the first to run into trouble. Some of been getting stuck on curbs, while another met a fiery demise underneath freight trains. In another domain, robot vacuums have also run astray. One infamous vacuum narrowly escaped a Travelodge hotel in Cambridge, UK, back in January. Another one got so lost that its owner distributed ‘missing’ posters.… read more. “MASA presence: Twitter users respond to delivery robot “lost in the woods””

[This short press release from North Carolina State University describes a new study that applied the uses and gratifications approach to understand what leads to consumer engagement with and interest in continued use of 360 degree videos, and they found key roles for realism and enjoyment. Quoting the abstract, the study

“found that five types of gratification, including utilitarian (i.e., navigation), hedonic (i.e., enjoyment), sensual (i.e., realism), social (i.e., community), and symbolic (i.e., coolness), significantly motivated users to use such immersive videos. Simultaneously, data demonstrated that these five types of gratification could influence users’ cognitive engagement with virtual content. In addition, such VR engagement facilitated users’ positive attitudes toward immersive videos and continued usage of them.”

Follow the link below to read the open-access publication. –Matthew]

[Image: Figure 1, a chart illustrating the conceptual model, from “Shared Virtual Reality Experiences during the COVID-19 Pan-demic: Exploring the Gratifications and Effects of Engagement with Immersive Videos”]

Study Finds Realism a Key Factor in Driving Engagement with Virtual Reality Videos

By Matt Shipman
May 12, 2022
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Yang Cheng ycheng20@ncsu.edu… read more. “Study identifies uses and gratifications that drive engagement with virtual reality videos”

[A team from Carnegie Mellon University has developed a clever way to enhance presence by using cameras in hand controllers to add full body tracking and thereby allow the user to see their own legs in the virtual environment. This CNN story provides details (and a six minute video report about “How virtual reality is gamifying fitness”; a February 2022 ISPR Presence News post of a CNN story by the same author provides context; and for more information and a demo-filled 2:34 minute video (also available via YouTube), see the project’s web page (there’s also a video presentation from CHI 2022 on YouTube). –Matthew]

These researchers came up with a solution for one of VR’s biggest issues: tracking your legs

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business
May 12, 2022

If you’re a newcomer to virtual reality, you’ll notice something odd about your appearance: Depending on the app, you may look down to see you’re represented by an avatar that’s just a floating torso or nothing but a pair of hands.… read more. “ControllerPose tracks your legs and lets you see them in VR, enhancing presence”

[This is a wonderful, sweet and wise blog entry from the Ericsson Blog that captures some of the inspiring potential of the presence experiences virtual reality and other technologies can provide. If you visit the original version of the post you can listen to the first author tell the story. –Matthew]

Meeting the grandfather of VR in the metaverse

“With my Oculus headset still warm, I sat and googled him,” says Ericsson’s Zeljka Sotra. “I couldn’t believe it. I just had a virtual experience with Tom Furness, the grandfather of VR technology. In this other space – a space I think much of the world will inhabit soon – it was a defining moment for me and reignited my passion to bring Web3.0 and the metaverse to life!”

By Zeljka Sotra and Tom Furness
May 12, 2022

I remember the day when the Internet went mobile.… read more. “Inspiring presence: Meeting the grandfather of VR in the metaverse”

[This story from the University of South Australia describes a new application of virtual reality and presence to help children stay safe during bushfires. See the original story for a two-minute news report from 7NEWS Australia (also available via YouTube) and for more details see the Journal of Educational Computing article. For a very different but related study, see the new Computers & Education article “Unintended consequences of spatial presence on learning in virtual reality“ by our colleagues Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn, Kristine Nowak and Jeremy Bailenson. –Matthew]

Immersive VR: Empowering kids to survive in fire, flood, and war

April 26, 2022

When you live in the driest State in the driest country in the world, bushfires are an unfortunate, and all-too-regular part of life. Learning how to survive such emergencies is important for all people, but especially for our youngest citizens.… read more. “Immersive VR: Empowering kids to survive in fire, flood, and war”