After years of research and development led by experts at UCF in collaboration with researchers from universities across the U.S. and in Europe, the Virtual Experience Research Accelerator (VERA) has reached two major milestones: powering its first full-scale study to address one of virtual reality’s most persistent barriers to adoption and awarding its first use grant to enhance immersive learning and information across industries.
VERA, a platform funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is the first, large-scale system for extended reality human subjects research and designed to advance the speed, scale and scope of immersive research. The platform enables immersive researchers to design, deploy, and manage virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) studies with remote participants therefore significantly improving the quality of the science, while reducing costs, lowering logistical barriers and expanding participant reach.
“No one has built anything like VERA before,” says Pegasus Professor Gregory Welch, lead principal investigator on VERA. “The team was really starting from scratch to create this national platform, integrating AI technologies and establishing policies and procedures that will produce methodologically rigorous behavioral data.”
“We’re excited for VERA to now start to run in an open beta mode and reach these two firsts,” Welch continues.
Accelerating Understanding of Cybersickness
For its first major large-scale study leveraging remote participants, VERA is helping researchers address one of the most persistent challenges in virtual reality: cybersickness.
Cybersickness occurs when symptoms such as nausea, dizziness and discomfort are caused by a mismatch between visual motion in a headset and the user’s physical motion. Associate Professor of Computer Science Gerd Bruder, who is an affiliate researcher in the Institute of Simulation and Training, is leading the research study in collaboration with other UCF researchers and external partners.
“Understanding who is susceptible to cybersickness is critical to improving VR accessibility, making VR more comfortable for all users and enabling broader adoption across research, education and industry,” Bruder says.
Early data collection highlights the powerful capabilities of the VERA platform to accelerate VR research at an unprecedented scale.
In just 15 cumulative days, VERA had more than 250 participants complete the full study protocol. In comparison, the original in-lab study collected data from just 30 participants and in traditional VR research settings, studies with hundreds of participants often require several months to complete.
For the study, each participant experiences a controlled VR rollercoaster ride on their own headset and provides sickness ratings at periodic intervals, a pre- and post- exposure questionnaire, an in-VR visual acuity assessment, and continuous head-tracking data. Each session is completed in approximately 30 minutes at home.
Enrollment is ongoing with a target of 2,000 participants. Preliminary analyses already suggest meaningful individual differences in how quickly and severely participants experience cybersickness.
“VERA was built to study problems like this with a combination of speed, scale and experimental complexity not previously possible,” Welch says. “The sectors where VERA can make an impact are expansive, from healthcare to workforce training to accessibility to learning.”
Groundbreaking Immersive Learning Project
For the first project selected in its Use Grant program, VERA is supporting innovative research to study how different immersive technologies engage learners in different ways. The study will help inform how to leverage emerging technologies in education, cultural institutions, public engagement and more.
The grant was awarded to the San José State University School of Information Library Technology Integration Lab in Silicon Valley and New Media Learning, one of the largest providers of virtual reality programming in public libraries.
The project will support a collaborative virtual reality research environment integrated with VERA with participants from across the U.S. in public libraries, universities and other sites.
Researchers will collect behavioral and interaction data including attention patterns, object interaction, navigation pathways, movement, clicks, engagement metrics, and time-on-task, supplemented by surveys and participant feedback. The resulting research environment will serve a scalable prototype for future applications to make immersive learning experiences more accessible to communities worldwide.
A distinguishing feature of the project is the active involvement of San José State University undergraduate and graduate students from the School of Information who will work alongside faculty researchers and technology partners to gain hands-on experience.
“Being selected as the first VERA Use Grant recipient is both an honor and an extraordinary opportunity,” says Anthony S. Chow, professor in the San José State University School of Information and founder of the Library Technology Integration Lab. “Through this collaboration, we hope to generate research that helps libraries, educators, museums and community organizations leverage virtual reality to address some of society’s most important challenges while creating meaningful research opportunities for students.”
“We are excited to welcome San José State University and New Media Learning as the first recipients of a VERA Use Grant,” Welch says. “Their expertise in libraries, immersive learning, public engagement and emerging technologies makes them ideal partners for demonstrating how VERA can accelerate impactful XR research. We believe this collaboration will help establish new models for studying learning, engagement, and information behavior in immersive environments.”
