Guest Editors' Introduction: Special Section on Virtual Reality

Abstract

I N this special section, we are pleased to present extended versions of four outstanding papers that were originally presented at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2006 Conference (VR 2006). IEEE Virtual Reality is the premier international conference on all aspects of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. The conference program at VR 2006 consisted of nine sessions on the following topics: perception, simulation and visualization, applications of VR, distributed and collaborative systems, evaluation and user studies, augmented reality, tracking and projection displays, 3D interaction, and haptic and olfactory displays. For this special section, the international program committee selected four excellent papers from the 28 accepted research papers. As always, the choice was difficult since many of the other papers were also excellent candidates. The first paper, by Sean D. Young, Bernard D. Adelstein, and Stephen R. Ellis, received the best paper award at the VR 2006 for its high relevance to the field of virtual reality and simulation. The authors asked the question, "Does taking a motion sickness questionnaire make you motion sick?" Surprisingly, their research indicates that the answer is "yes!" The paper demonstrates that the administration of the questionnaire itself makes the participant aware that the virtual environment may produce motion sickness. The study shows that reports of motion sickness after immersion are much greater when both pre and posttest questionnaires are given than when only a posttest questionnaire is used. Since pretest questionnaires cannot simply be dropped in most cases, the authors suggest a number of ways to reduce this effect and discuss the implications of their observations. Augmented reality (AR) systems, which combine realworld and virtual imagery, present a unique set of perceptual issues for the user. The paper by J. Edward