Virtual Reality
Theme leaders: Dr Daniela Romano
Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology which allows interacting with a 3D computer-simulated environment as if it was real, whether that environment is a simulation of the real world or an imaginary world.
A computer simulation, or a computational model, is a computer program, which attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system. Computer simulations have become a useful part of many natural systems from physics, biology, to human systems in economics, psychology, and social science, as well as in the process of engineering new systems in order to gain insight into their behaviour.
Presence is a theoretical concept describing the effect that people experience when they interact with a computer-mediated or computer-generated environment (Sheridan, 1994). Lombard and Ditton (1997) described presence as "an illusion that a mediated experience is not mediated".
In particular the Virtual Reality group conducts research in the following areas:
- Serious Games, or Game-based Learning, in Virtual Environments
- Presence
- Believable Characters and Social Synthetic Interactions
- Interactive Creative Media
The facility
The virtual reality facility at the University of Sheffield is a sophisticated integration of systems including computer hardware, graphics systems, audio and force feedback. The participant controls the virtual environment through a multitude of flexible sensors monitoring, for example, the location and orientation of their body, use of wand or pinch gloves.
For some applications, such as training in responding to emergency situations, it is important to monitor the physiological response of the participant and here sensors monitoring respiration and an electrocardiogram have been integrated.
To maintain state of the art capabilities and meet the needs of diverse research applications the virtual reality facility draws upon the University's depth of computing experience in areas such as computer graphics, machine learning, natural language processing, speech and hearing, neurocomputing and robotics.
The research projects undertaken on the facility are multidisciplinary utilising expertise from across the science and engineering disciplines and often involving, for example, medicine or social sciences.