@article{podkosova_2022_bimflexi-vr, title = "BIMFlexi-VR: A Virtual Reality Framework for Early-Stage Collaboration in Flexible Industrial Building Design ", author = "Iana Podkosova and Julia Reisinger and Hannes Kaufmann and Iva Kovacic", year = "2022", abstract = "Integrated industrial building design is an interdisciplinary task, in which planning of flexible building structures requires effective communication and collaboration between all stakeholders already in early design stage. This paper presents BIMFlexi-VR, a collaborative framework which implements a real-time bidirectional link between a parametric modelling component created in Grasshopper for Rhinoceros that performs optimized structural calculations of an industrial building, and an immersive Virtual Reality environment in which the automatically calculated building is visualized. Users of BIMFlexi-VR are able to change parameters defining the outcome of the structural calculation directly inside the virtual environment and see the modified building design together with the associated fitness metrics in a matter of seconds. Providing an efficient and intuitive platform for early exploration of industrial building designs, BIMFlexi-VR enables collaborative decision making and facilitates the creation of more efficient and sustainable industrial constructions.", month = feb, doi = "10.3389/frvir.2022.782169", issn = "2673-4192", journal = "Frontiers in Virtual Reality", volume = "3", pages = "1--13", keywords = "Virtual Reality in Industry 4.0, Collaborative BIM, VR in AEC", URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2022/podkosova_2022_bimflexi-vr/", } @article{pirch_2021_VRN, title = "The VRNetzer platform enables interactive network analysis in Virtual Reality", author = "Sebastian Pirch and Felix M\"{u}ller and Eugenia Iofinova and Julia Pazmandi and Christiane H\"{u}tter and Martin Chiettini and Celine Sin and Kaan Boztug and Iana Podkosova and Hannes Kaufmann and J\"{o}rg Menche", year = "2021", abstract = "Networks provide a powerful representation of interacting components within complex systems, making them ideal for visually and analytically exploring big data. However, the size and complexity of many networks render static visualizations on typically-sized paper or screens impractical, resulting in proverbial ‘hairballs’. Here, we introduce a Virtual Reality (VR) platform that overcomes these limitations by facilitating the thorough visual, and interactive, exploration of large networks. Our platform allows maximal customization and extendibility, through the import of custom code for data analysis, integration of external databases, and design of arbitrary user interface elements, among other features. As a proof of concept, we show how our platform can be used to interactively explore genome-scale molecular networks to identify genes associated with rare diseases and understand how they might contribute to disease development. Our platform represents a general purpose, VRbased data exploration platform for large and diverse data types by providing an interface that facilitates the interaction between human intuition and state-of-the-art analysis methods.", month = apr, doi = "10.1038/s41467-021-22570-w", journal = "Nature Communications", number = "2432", volume = "12", pages = "1--14", keywords = "virtual realitz", URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2021/pirch_2021_VRN/", } @article{reimer-2021-CVR, title = "Colocation for SLAM-Tracked VR Headsets with Hand Tracking", author = "Dennis Reimer and Iana Podkosova and Daniel Scherzer and Hannes Kaufmann", year = "2021", abstract = "In colocated multi-user Virtual Reality applications, relative user positions in the virtual environment need to match their relative positions in the physical tracking space. A mismatch between virtual and real relative user positions might lead to harmful events such as physical user collisions. This paper examines three calibration methods that enable colocated Virtual Reality scenarios for SLAM-tracked head-mounted displays without the need for an external tracking system. Two of these methods—fixed-point calibration and marked-based calibration—have been described in previous research; the third method that uses hand tracking capabilities of head-mounted displays is novel. We evaluated the accuracy of these three methods in an experimental procedure with two colocated Oculus Quest devices. The results of the evaluation show that our novel hand tracking-based calibration method provides better accuracy and consistency while at the same time being easy to execute. The paper further discusses the potential of all evaluated calibration methods. ", month = apr, doi = "10.3390/computers10050058", issn = "2073-431X", journal = "Computers", number = "5", volume = "10", pages = "1--17", keywords = " colocation, multi-user VR, hand tracking , shared space", URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2021/reimer-2021-CVR/", } @talk{Podkosova_2021, title = "Exploring behaviour towards avatars and agents in immersive virtual environments with mixed-agency interactions", author = "Iana Podkosova and Katja Zibrek and Julien Pettre and Ludovic Hoyet and Anne-Helene Olivier", year = "2021", abstract = "Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) in which multiple users nav- igate by walking and interact with each other in natural ways are perfectly suited for team applications from training to recreation. At the same time, they can solve scheduling conflicts by employing virtual agents in place of missing team members or additional par- ticipants of a scenario. While this idea has been long discussed in IVEs research there are no prior publications on social interactions in systems with multiple embodied users and agents. This paper presents an experiment at a work-in-progress stage that addresses the impact of perceived agency and control of a virtual character in a collaborative scenario with two embodied users and one virtual agent. Our future study will investigate whether users treat avatars and agents differently within a mixed-agency scenario, analysing several behavioural metrics and self-report of participants", event = "IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops", location = "Lisbon, Portugal", keywords = "Collaborative Virtual Reality, Avatars, Virtual Agents", URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2021/Podkosova_2021/", } @inproceedings{brument_2019_br19, title = "Virtual vs. Physical Navigation in VR: Study of Gaze and Body Segments Temporal Reorientation Behaviour", author = "Hugo Brument and Iana Podkosova and Hannes Kaufmann and Anne-Helene Olivier and Ferran Argelaguet", year = "2019", abstract = "This paper investigates whether the body anticipation synergies in real environments (REs) are preserved during navigation in virtual environments (VEs). Experimental studies related to the control of human locomotion in REs during curved trajectories report a top-down reorientation strategy with the reorientation of the gaze anticipating the reorientation of head, the shoulders and finally the global body motion. This anticipation behavior provides a stable reference frame to the walker to control and reorient his/her body according to the future walking direction. To assess body anticipation during navigation in VEs, we conducted an experiment where participants, wearing a head-mounted display, performed a lemniscate trajectory in a virtual environment (VE) using five different navigation techniques, including walking, virtual steering (head, hand or torso steering) and passive navigation. For the purpose of this experiment, we designed a new control law based on the power-law relation between speed and curvature during human walking. Taken together our results showed a similar ordered top-down sequence of reorientation of the gaze, head and shoulders during curved trajectories between walking in REs and in VEs (for all the evaluated techniques). However, the anticipation mechanism was significantly higher for the walking condition compared to the others. The results presented in this paper pave the way to the better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of human navigation in VEs and to the design of navigation techniques more adapted to humans.", month = mar, location = "Osaka, Japan", event = "Ieee Vr 2019", booktitle = "Proceedings of IEEE VR 2019 - 26th IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces", pages = "1--10", keywords = "virtual reality", URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2019/brument_2019_br19/", } @phdthesis{podkosova-2019-MVR, title = "Walkable Multi-User VR: Effects of Physical and Virtual Colocation", author = "Iana Podkosova", year = "2019", abstract = "The research presented in this dissertation focuses on multi-user VR, where multiple immersed users navigate the virtual world by physically walking in a large tracking area. In such a setup, different combinations of user colocation within the physical and the virtual space are possible. We consider a setup to be multi-user if at least one of these two spaces is shared. The dissertation starts with the classification of combinations of physical and virtual colocation. Four such combinations are defined: colocated shared VR, colocated non-shared VR, distributed shared VR and shared VR with mixed colocation. The characteristics of each of these four setups are discussed and the resulting problems and research questions outlined. The dissertation continues with the description of ImmersiveDeck - a large-scale multi-user VR platform that enables navigation by walking and natural interaction. Then, four experiments on multi-user walkable VR developed with the use of ImmersiveDeck are described. The first two experiments are set in colocated non-shared VR where walking users share a tracking space while being immersed into separate virtual worlds. We investigate users´ mutual awareness in this setup and explore methods of preventing mutual collisions between walking users. The following two experiments study shared VR scenarios in situations of varied physical colocation. We investigate the effects that different modes of physical colocation have on locomotion, collision avoidance and proxemics patterns exhibited by walking users. The sense of copresence and social presence within the virtual world reported by users is investigated as well. The experiments in the colocated non-shared VR setup show that HMD-based VR can produce immersion so strong that users do not notice others being present in their immediate proximity, thus making collision prevention the task of utmost importance. In our proposed method of displaying notification avatars to prevent potential imminent collisions between colocated users, the suitability of a particular type of notification avatar was found to be dependent on the type of scenario experienced by users. The general result of the experiments in shared VR is that physical colocation affects locomotor and proxemics behavior of users as well as their subjective experience in terms of copresence. In particular, users are more cautious about possible collisions and more careful in their collision avoidance behavior in the colocated setup compared to the real environment. In the distributed setup, conventional collision avoidance is often abandoned. vi", address = "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria", school = "Research Unit of Computer Graphics, Institute of Visual Computing and Human-Centered Technology, Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien ", keywords = "virtual reality, multi-user VR", URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2019/podkosova-2019-MVR/", }