Research

EU project · Horizon Europe

DIDYMOS-XR

Real-time digital twins of cities and industrial sites that combine multi-sensor data and AI. Our user-centred evaluation looks at how people perceive the quality and realism of these twins, and what makes them useful in practice.

Related papers

• Investigating the Effect of Prior Exposure and Fidelity on Quality and Realism Perception of VR Digital Twins 2025
• User-centric evaluation methods for digital twin applications in extended reality 2025
• Digital twins for extended reality tourism: user experience evaluation across user groups 2025

DIDYMOS-XR is funded by the European Union under grant agreement No. 101092875.

EU project · Horizon 2020

ACCORDION

Edge and cloud computing for demanding, latency-sensitive applications such as collaborative VR. We studied how network quality shapes the experience of the people using them.

Related papers

• VR cloud gaming UX: Exploring the impact of network quality on emotion, presence, game experience and cybersickness 2024

ACCORDION received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 ICT Cloud Computing programme under grant agreement No. 871793.

Haptics · Interaction

Dynamic weight change

Can a virtual mug feel heavier as it fills? Pseudo-haptics (small changes to how the hand moves on screen) combined with vibrotactile feedback make people perceive the weight change, without any extra hardware.

Related papers

• Experiencing dynamic weight changes in virtual reality through pseudo-haptics and vibrotactile feedback 2024

Interaction modalities

Hand tracking vs controllers

Best Workshop Paper · MMVE 2025

The same tasks done with bare hands or with controllers. Modalities are not interchangeable: each has its own trade-offs in usability, comfort and engagement, and there is no single best one.

Related papers

• Influence of hand tracking as a way of interaction in virtual reality on user experience 2020
• Influence of Gameplay Duration, Hand Tracking, and Controller Based Control Methods on UX in VR 2024
• Multimodal User Experience in Extended Reality: Exploring Hand Tracking, Voice, and Passthrough Interactions 2025

Context · Public spaces

Social acceptability

Honorable Mention · IEEE VR 2021

Participants played VR games inside 360° recordings of public places, so we could control how many people were around and how close they were. The more people nearby, the lower the feeling of safety and the worse the experience: players fear collisions and being recorded.

Related papers

• Influence of interactivity and social environments on user experience and social acceptability in virtual reality 2021
• The impact of social environment and interaction focus on user experience and social acceptability of an augmented reality game 2024
• Influence of Interactivity in Shaping User Experience and Social Acceptability of Mobile Augmented Reality 2025

Proxemics · Mobile AR

Personal space in AR

How close may a virtual person come? Humanoid characters walked towards participants in mobile AR, female or male, placed either at a predefined or at a dynamic distance. How the character was placed changed the position and width of people's personal-space boundaries and how much they enjoyed the experience; the character's gender affected the inner boundary and social presence.

Related papers

• Investigation of personal space perception in augmented reality 2022

Health · Motivation

Exergames

VR exercise on a rowing machine and in multiplayer games. We study what keeps people moving: the virtual environment, the interface, biofeedback, other players and network delay.

Related papers

• Impact of virtual environments on motivation and engagement during exergames 2018
• Influence of UI complexity and positioning on user experience during VR exergames 2019
• Impact of constant visual biofeedback on user experience in virtual reality exergames 2019
• Influence of network delay in virtual reality multiplayer exergames: Who is actually delayed? 2019

Readability · Comfort

Reading in VR

Participants adjusted text in VR until it was most comfortable to read. This gave practical values for text distance, size and contrast, and eye tracking showed how readability affects the experience.

Related papers

• User experience of reading in virtual reality — finding values for text distance, size and contrast 2020
• Assessing user experience of text readability with eye tracking in virtual reality 2022

DATAVR was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the Software Campus programme.

Continuous vs retrospective

Emotion ratings

How should we ask people how they feel in VR: continuously while it happens, or afterwards? We compare rating methods inside the headset, using 360° videos chosen to induce specific emotions.

Related papers

• Comparing emotional states induced by 360 videos via head-mounted display and computer screen 2020
• Questionnaires embedded in virtual environments: reliability and positioning of rating scales in virtual environments 2019