Background In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of students with depression, anxiety, and perceived stress. A solution that has been increasingly used for improving health and well-being is exergaming. The effects and acceptability of exergames have been studied widely but mostly with older adults. The feasibility and usability of exergames among university students, especially those of immersive virtual reality (iVR) exergames, remain unexplored. Objective This study aimed to explore the feasibility of a 6-week iVR exergame–based intervention in reducing anxiety, depression, and perceived stress among university students and to examine the usability and acceptability of such games. Methods A total of 31 university students were recruited to participate in a 6-week study in which they needed to play a boxing-style iVR exergame called FitXR (FitXR Limited) twice per week (30 minutes per session). Their anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory), depression (Beck Depression Inventory-II), and perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale) levels were measured before and after intervention. Results A total of 15 participants completed the 6-week study. Our results suggested that participants’ mean depression scores decreased significantly from 8.33 (SD 5.98) to 5.40 (SD 5.14) after the intervention (P=.01). In addition, most participants (14/15, 93%) believed that the iVR exergame has good usability. Furthermore, most participants (14/15, 93%) were satisfied with the iVR gameplay experience and would play the iVR exergame again in the future. Of the 15 participants, 11 (73%) would recommend the iVR exergame to their friends. Conclusions The results gained from this study show that the iVR exergame has good usability, is highly acceptable, and has the potential to reduce depression levels among university students.
The six text selection techniques explored in this research, grouped by three pointing mechanisms: (a) Controller-based: Controller+Click and Controller+Dwell, (b) Head-based: Head+Click and Head+Dwell, and (c) Hand-based: Hand+Pinch and Hand+Dwell.
Hand-based interaction, such as using a handheld controller or making hand gestures, has been widely adopted as the primary method for interacting with both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs). In contrast, hands-free interaction avoids the need for users' hands and although it can afford additional benefits, there has been limited research in exploring and evaluating hands-free techniques for these HMDs. As VR HMDs become ubiquitous, people will need to do text editing, which requires selecting text segments. Similar to hands-free interaction, text selection is underexplored. This research focuses on both, text selection via hands-free interaction. Our exploration involves a user study with 24 participants to investigate the performance, user experience, and workload of three hands-free selection mechanisms (Dwell, Blink, Voice) to complement head-based pointing. Results indicate that Blink outperforms Dwell and Voice in completion time and accuracy.Users' subjective feedback also shows that Blink is the preferred technique for text selection. This work is the first to explore hands-free interaction for text selection in VR HMDs and our results provide a solid platform for further research in this important area.
Despite the widespread interest in leveraging non-player characters (NPCs) to enhance gameplay experiences, there is a gap in understanding of how NPC spectators (i.e., those virtual characters in the scene that watch users' actions) affect players. For instance, the impact of NPC spectators' presence and feedback on players' performance and experience has not been studied, especially in virtual reality (VR) exergames. This paper aims to fill this gap and reports two user studies that assess their effect on such games. Study 1 explored the impact of having NPC spectators present and their feedback available in a gesture-based VR exergame and found having NPC spectators and their feedback could improve players' game performance, experience, and exertion. Based on Study 1's results, we further explored two characteristics of the spectators—their group size (small/large) and their feedback (with/without). The results show that (1) a large spectator number is more helpful since it improves the overall game experience (higher competence, flow, immersion), increases AvgHR% (the average heart rate percentage divided by the maximum heart rate), and enhances performance (improved players' combo performance and increased gesture success rate for particular gesture); (2) spectator feedback is instrumental in improving players' performance (higher gesture success rates, more combos performed successfully, more monster's combos prevented), enhancing game experience (positive affect, competence, flow, and immersion), and reducing negative game experience, increasing exertion (AvgHR% and burned more calories). Based on the results, we derived two main design recommendations for VR exergames that could pave the way for improving gameplay performance and game experience, especially among young adults.
Text selection is a common and essential activity during text interaction in all interactive systems. As Augmented Reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) become more widespread, they will need to provide effective interaction techniques for text selection that ensure users can complete a range of text manipulation tasks (e.g., to highlight, copy, and paste text, send instant messages, and browse the web). As a relatively new platform, text selection in AR is largely unexplored and the suitability of interaction techniques supported by current AR HMDs for text selection tasks is unclear. This research aims to fill this gap and reports on an experiment with 12 participants, which compares the performance and usability (user experience and workload) of four possible techniques (Hand+Pinch, Hand+Dwell, Head+Pinch, and Head+Dwell). Our results suggest that Head+Dwell should be the default selection technique, as it is relatively fast, has the lowest error rate and workload, and has the highestrated user experience and social acceptance.
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