This study investigates the efficacy of Augmented Reality (AR) in enhancing attention restoration, leveraging the conceptual framework of Attention Restoration Theory (ART) within a digitally crafted narrative space centered around a bonfire ...

The research community has long been interested in human interaction with embodied virtual characters in virtual reality (VR). At the same time, interaction with self-similar virtual characters, or virtual doppelgängers, has become a prominent topic in ...

While digital humans are key aspects of the rapidly evolving areas of virtual reality, gaming, and online communications, many applications would benefit from using digital personalized (stylized) representations of users, as they were shown to highly ...

Avatars are our digital embodied alter egos. Virtual embodiment by avatars allows social interaction with others using the full spectrum of verbal and non-verbal behaviour. Still, one's avatar appearances is elective. Hence, avatars make it possible for ...

It has been widely proven among several research disciplines that the information conveyed through the visual channel can be critical for communication. Altering either the motion or the appearance of our interlocutor can change the opinion we form ...

Many virtual environments rely on a social population that needs to behave in a plausible manner. Crowd simulations typically concern themselves with simulating collision free movement, while getting into and managing social contact with other humans is ...

An encounter with a virtual person can be one of the most compelling experiences in immersive virtual reality, as Mel Slater and his group have shown in many experiments on social interaction in VR. Much of this is due to virtual reality's ability to ...

When referring to augmented reality characters, their actual size comparing to their physical surroundings is an important factor responsible for creating more realistic and immersive environments. By creating life-sized augmented characters we are able ...

Virtual tridimensional creatures are active actors in many types of games. Some of these games require, in addition to quantity, the simulation of kinship and evolution, not only of human character models but also of different types of animals, toon ...

In real human crowds, diversification is caused by many factors such as gender, age, skin color, clothing, walking style, psychology etc., yet most crowd simulation systems rely only on appearance related variables for diversification. This research ...

Dolls, employed as tangible interfaces, have the potential to provide an easy to learn interaction device that allows children to animate virtual characters in an intuitive way. We assume that dolls and action figures are more compelling, easy to ...

With respect to genuine cognitive faculties, present synthetic characters inhabiting online virtual worlds are, to say the least, completely impaired. Current methods aimed at the creation of “immersive” virtual worlds only avatars and NPCs the illusion ...

With evolution in computer and mobile networking technologies comes the challenge of offering novel and complex multimedia applications and end-user services in heterogeneous environments for both developers and service providers. This paper describes ...

This paper reports on a study to examine the similarities and differences in experiencing an interpersonal scenario with real and virtual humans. A system that allows medical students to interview a life-size virtual patient using natural speech and ...