Contagious yawning is a well-documented phenomenon in which people – and even some non-human animals – yawn reflexively when they detect a nearby yawn. Another aspect of this is that when people are in company, the presence of others also causes most of us supress that reflex (or at least try to).

The presence of an actual person in the testing room had a more significant effect on yawning than anything in the VR environment
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Contagious yawning is a well-documented phenomenon in which people – and even some non-human animals – yawn reflexively when they detect a nearby yawn
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So when studying the psychological effects of being immersed and interacting with others in Virtual Reality, researchers at the University of British Columbia decided to use yawning patterns as a benchmark to compare people’s behaviours in real-world face-to-face interactions as opposed to VR. And as often happens with such research – specially in what is still a relatively new field – the results were mixed and somewhat surprising.

To instigate contagious yawning in a VR environment, the team from UBC, along with Andrew Gallup from State University of New York Polytechnic Institute, had test subjects wear an immersive headset and exposed them to videos of people yawning. In those conditions, the rate of contagious yawning was 38 per cent, which is in line with the typical real-life rate of 30-60 per cent.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia decided to use yawning patterns as a benchmark to compare people’s behaviours in real-world face-to-face interactions as opposed to VR
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If the gap between VR and real life could be closed, scientists would be able to examine the link between the brain, behaviour, and the human experience in both actual reality and altered realities
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However, when the researchers introduced social presence in the virtual environment, they were surprised to find it actually had limited impact on subjects’ yawning. Subjects yawned at the same rate, even while being watched by a virtual human avatar or a virtual webcam. It was an interesting paradox: stimuli that trigger contagious yawns in real life did the same in virtual reality, but stimuli that suppress yawns in real life did not.

The presence of an actual person in the testing room had a more significant effect on yawning than anything in the VR environment. Even though subjects couldn’t see or hear their company, just knowing a researcher was present was enough to diminish their yawning. Social cues in actual reality therefore appeared to dominate and supersede those in virtual reality.

“People expect VR experiences to mimic actual reality and thus induce similar forms of thought and behaviour,” said Alan Kingstone, a professor in UBC’s department of psychology and the study’s senior author. “This study shows that there’s a big separation between being in the real world, and being in a VR world.”

Which is not really surprising, as we’re of course consciously aware that what we experience in Virtual Reality is different and separate from our experience of reality itself. However, there have also been numerous studies that show how psychological effects experienced virtually do carry on to our off-world behaviour.

Yet as VR becomes an increasingly popular research tool in psychology and other fields, these findings show that researchers also need to account for its limitations, the study concludes.

When the researchers introduced social presence in the virtual environment, they were surprised to find it actually had limited impact on subjects’ yawning
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“Using VR to examine how people think and behave in real life may very well lead to conclusions that are fundamentally wrong. This has profound implications for people who hope to use VR to make accurate projections regarding future behaviours,” said Kingstone. “For example, predicting how pedestrians will behave when walking amongst driverless cars, or the decisions that pilots will make in an emergency situation. Experiences in VR may be a poor proxy for real life.”

If that gap between VR and real life could be closed, scientists would be able to examine the link between the brain, behaviour, and the human experience in both actual reality and altered realities that span place and time, Kingstone added.

We’re of course consciously aware that what we experience in Virtual Reality is different and separate from our experience of reality itself
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Scientific research like this is extremely welcome as we continue to navigate our way through these immersive technologies and our effects in our brains, but as is often the case, it leaves us with a lot more questions than answers. For example, would the use of better, more realistic avatars affect the subject’s sense of social engagement with the experience? We know that this aspect of meaningful social interaction is one of the most challenging aspects of developing the technology, which is probably why we haven’t seen a Facebook equivalent in the Social VR space emerge as yet. And all this probably means that we might be seeing a lot more exciting research about yawning in VR…

This article originally appeared on VRScout

Scientists Use Yawning To Study Social Presence In VR via @alicebonasio https://t.co/0nuI1POFix pic.twitter.com/9Lms2q9s14

— VRScout (@VRScout) January 26, 2019

As VR becomes an increasingly popular research tool in psychology and other fields, these findings show researchers need to account for Limitations
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For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Studying Social Presence in VR appeared first on Tech Trends.

As Linden Lab opens the long-anticipated Sansar Beta, there’s already a whole multiverse to explore, and create. 

Tech Trends has been following the progress of Sansar for a while now
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What now feels like a very long time ago (it was in fact only April 2016, but VR has come a long way since then) I met Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg at their San Francisco HQ to chat about what was then called “Project Sansar”, their ambitious social VR platform.

Much like “The Facebook” in tech less is often more, so the “Project” bit has since been dropped, and Sansar has now opened to the public in Beta following a closed creator preview earlier this year.

Until now, complexity and cost has limited who could create and publish in this medium, and Sansar dramatically changes that.

explains Altberg, who says he’s now looking forward to an “explosion of creativity”

Indeed, Sansar’s Atlas directory of public experiences already features hundreds of virtual experiences, including multiplayer games, recreations of historic sites and landmarks, art installations, movie theaters, museums, narrative experiences, jungle temples, 360º video domes and sci-fi themed hangouts, says Linden’s Communications Director Peter Gray.

We wanted to make Sansar available to everyone as early as possible, and there are still a lot of features and capabilities that we’re excited to add to the platform soon, as well as many improvements to the current featureset.

Which is all very well and good, but, to be perfectly honest, it still looks damn sexy (not in a naughty way, although that might well come soon). Over the past year I’ve seen a lot of these platforms popping up – many of them with amazing potential – but their wow factor usually hinges on the immersion of VR itself rather than the visuals.

Sansar stands out in the Social VR space with slick visuals and functionality
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Sansar, however, definitely stands out in terms of slick visuals and functionality. It doesn’t feel half-baked, and this is due not only to the stunning environments, but to the avatar features, which – thanks to a partnership with IKINEMA – incorporate full-body Inverse Kinematics to enable avatars to mirror users’ full-body movements. Additionally, Speech Graphics sync facial animations automatically to match speech patterns, all of which goes a long way towards enabling much more natural social interactions in VR.

Avatars that move naturally are important to the quality of the social experiences users can create and enjoy on our platform, and integrating IKinema’s tech helps us to deliver that without requiring any peripherals beyond VR hand controllers.

explains IKinema CEO Alexandre Pechev

A lot of work has gone into getting Sansar to this stage – Linden Lab has a dedicated team of over 70 people working on the platform, and development has been on-going for several years – but in order to fulfil their ambition to become the dominant platform in the VR space, they are counting on two very unique advantages:

It is able to self-fund the platform’s development, and the source of that funding is also the longest enduring “metaverse” out there, Second Life (SL). And means they have a lot of data on what works – and doesn’t – in the virtual world.

After 15 years, Second Life is still going strong with a thriving creative community
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After 15 years – a veritable lifetime in tech terms – SL is still going strong with about a million users, consistently generating real-world profits for Linden Lab and giving it access to a very engaged creative community, many of whom are very excited about Sansar as Gray confirms:

There’s been strong interest in Sansar among Second Life users since we first announced the project. “Many SL users are thrilled by what they can create today and are loving the many compelling Sansar experiences that are already available to explore.

It’s tempting to think of Sansar as a sort of “SL 2.0” but it wants to be much more than that. To capitalize on the new wave of enthusiasm for Virtual Reality, this new platform needs to become accessible and intuitive in a way that SL never really managed to be. One of the key obstacles which stalled the platform’s growth was its steep learning curve – which suited the hardcore community but put off casual users – and the difficulty of sharing content outside the platform itself.

With Sansar, however, people can go directly to whichever experience they want, says Gray. Each of these hosted multi-user experiences has a unique link that can be shared with whomever the creator wishes. Via Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs, etc. and viewed either with VR headsets like the HTC VIVE or Oculus as well as on desktop mode on PCs. Each instance of an experience is currently allows 35+ concurrent avatars, and automated instancing will enable creators to reach unlimited audiences, says Gray:

Let’s say you’re an educator interested in space exploration. You can click a link to visit the Apollo Museum experience that LOOT Interactive created with Sansar, and you’ll go straight there. You might then choose to browse the Atlas directory and find a social VR basketball game that looks fun, or an immersive art experience that intrigues you, and could invite friends to join you there. If instead, fantasy roleplaying and VR horror experiences are more appealing, you can go right to those.

Sansar operates a freemium model, where users can join for free but extra support is available to creators via subscriptions starting at $9.99 per month. It has a drag-and-drop editing interface that makes it much easier to create scenes either by importing assets from common 3D modeling tools or purchased from the Sansar Store.

Sansar has a Freemium model that lets users monetize their creations
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Monetisation is a key part of their strategy, which makes sense considering Second Life’s successful track record in making a virtual economy pay for both itself and its users. They created a marketplace called the Sansar Store Creators can sell virtual objects – thousands of items are already available to purchase in Sansar Dollars (S$) – but in future Linden will also enable users to sell, rent, or charge for access to actual experiences.

But which among those thousands of experiences published so far have most caught the eye of the team at Linden Lab? VP of product Bjorn Laurin is partial to the Apollo Museum experience and Grey couldn’t quite decide between Little Giant – where you can share in the colourful imagination of a 3-year old child as her toys literally come to life – or Secrets of the Worldwhale where you walk up to a wizened old rat to begin an adventure exploring “an eerie world on the back of an ancient whale and discover hidden treasure.”

Altberg, however, choose as his personal favourite a project spearheaded by Second Life veteran Draxtor and Ria (who also created the Little Giant experience). 114 Harvest is a collaborative storytelling project about a quaint little town that harbours a dark secret, and the potential for developing such collaborations is evidenced by the fact that the 114 Harvest Facebook group quickly attracted nearly 1600 members. If this early interest is any indication, it seems fair to expect that Altberg might get that explosion of creativity after all

This article was originally published on The Next Web

Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post You Can Now Start Creating Your Own Virtual Worlds with Sansar appeared first on Tech Trends.