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Social Interaction in

Virtual Worlds:�

What is the Metaverse,

and why should you

care about it?

Ria Gualano &

Jonathan Segal�

Cornell Virtual

Embodiment Lab

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Introductions

Jonathan Segal

Second Year Information Science PhD Student

Andrea Stevenson Won’s Virtual Embodiment Lab

Ria Gualano

Second Year Communication PhD Student

Andrea Stevenson Won’s Virtual Embodiment Lab

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Overview

History of VR

What is Social VR?

VR Research Advancements

How this Affects You

Demo

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Breakout

What do you know about VR?
Have you used it before?

What platforms?

What are you most curious about VR?

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What is VR?

Stereoscope

Sword of Damocles 1968

Wheatstone mirror stereoscope - 1832

Holmes stereoscope - 19th century

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What is VR?

Google Trends

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What is VR?

VR in Pop Culture

Ready Player One

Snow Crash (coined “The Metaverse”)

Ender’s Game

Ready Player One

- Published in 2011

- In a dystopian 2045, where the planet is collapsing due to an environmental crisis, people escape the world’s devastating reality by entering the OASIS, which is a virtual reality world.

- When the OASIS creator dies, he offers up his entire fortune, and ownership of the OASIS platform, to the player who can find the Easter egg he hid inside the platform, which leads to a whole adventure.

- Players interact via avatars and use both visors for visual immersion as well as haptic tech like gloves.

Snow Crash

- Published in 1992

- Inspired many Silicon Valley giants

- It’s sometime 21^st century LA – years after worldwide economic collapse

- Government, military, police and mafia run by private corporations

- Follows Hiro, a pizza deliveryman who moonlights as a freelance hacker

- Enters the metaverse to investigate a cyber virus that’s knocking out hackers everywhere – due to immersion, crashes computers and damages real world brains via the optic nerve – serves as a drug in the real world

- Coined the term “metaverse” – “meta” and “universe” combined

o The idea that one virtual world is universal

Ender’s Game

- Published in 1985

- Suggested reading for many military organizations – including the U.S. Marine Corps

- War between humans and aliens

- Preparation for the third wave of fighting

- Recruit children to train to become commanders

- Part of training is a shared virtual reality battle simulation – “VR Caves”

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What is VR?

VR in Pop Culture

Ready Player One

Snow Crash (coined “The Metaverse”)

Ender’s Game

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How does it work?

A virtual environment (VE) is an environment where a user’s movements are tracked and his or her surroundings are rendered.

A VE replaces the cues of the physical world with digital ones.

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What is VR? - What it looks like

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What is Social VR?

Terms:

Virtual Reality

Metaverse

Avatars

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What is Social VR?

Terms:

Virtual Reality

captures user movement and replaces sensory input from the non virtual world with digital content

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XR, AR, VR, MR - Huh?

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What is Social VR? - Popular Platforms

Meta Horizon Worlds

AltspaceVR

(recently shut down)

Rec Room

VR Chat

Altspace VR: Had 173,000 users. Microsoft saved it in 2017 (lack of funds) but shut it down in 2023 - shifting focus to Microsoft Mesh (a cloud-based platform for mixed reality collaboration) - shows Star Wars-esque hologram avatars.

Had different “worlds” – In its prime, hosted magic shows, church services, support groups, a virtual fashion show for Paris fashion week, a red carpet premiere of Baba Yaga, an animated movie that starred Daisy Ridley, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Hudson and Glenn Close – lots of disappointment about its shutdown

Meta Horizons: 280,000 users at its peak. Free platform - hub called “the plaza” where you can portal to other worlds, which are usually generated by users. You can experience a haunted house, visit museums, see a show at a comedy club, hang out on a beach.

VR Chat: Peak concurrent user count was over 92,000 users. Over 25,000 community created worlds. Usable on desktop or through VR headset, though more than 80% of users go through VR since there are mobility restrictions on the desktop version. Can play mini golf, zombie tag or freeze tag, pretend to be a chef in a busy restaurant, spend a few hours on top of a highrise rooftop. There are also more experiential, plot-based worlds where multiple players can team up to complete a 6-hour horror movie campaign. You can even go sledding!

Rec Room: 29 million users. You can play games of dodgeball or paintball, go bowling, complete an escape room, or fight monsters to retrieve a stolen trophy.

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Before social virtual worlds were available for immersive virtual reality, they were studied in academic labs.

Collaborative Virtual Environments

Virtual reality is not a new medium, it’s been studied for decades.

It’s been used as a tool for psychological research, as a way to train people to do tasks in the real world, and it’s also been studied in itself. And in all of those papers that looked at what people did in virtual reality and how it affected them, there was always a paragraph that said “someday, people will be routinely using virtual reality in their homes, so we need to understand the implications of putting people into these virtual environments.”

So, now we are getting closer to that point, of having widespread consumer use of VR. We are not there yet. How many people here have tried virtual reality? This includes the Cardboard-type devices that wrap around your phone.

How many people have a consumer virtual reality headset in their home or workplace? For example, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or Playstation VR?

How many people have interacted with other people via immersive virtual reality?

Mozilla VR worlds

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How it supports researchers

A collaborative virtual environment allows multiple users to be together.

Fox, J., Arena, D., & Bailenson, J. N. (2009). Virtual reality: A survival guide for the social scientist. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 21(3), 95.

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Mazeworld

Interdisciplinary teams building environments

Teamwork in VR

Understanding teamwork in VR

Exposure Therapy Module

Francis, R. F., Segal, J., Farah, Y., Rozell, J., Dorneich, M. C., & Gilbert, S. (2022). MazeWorld: A Game-Based Environment developed to Assess Teaming Behaviors. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 66(1), 65-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181322661180

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Let’s talk avatars

Customizable vessel for virtual self-expression that mediate social interactions

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Cool research on avatars!

Behavior change

VR transcends time

Self-representation

Expanding the customization library

Van Gelder, J. L., Cornet, L. J., Zwalua, N. P., Mertens, E. C., & van der Schalk, J. (2022). Interaction with the future self in virtual reality reduces self-defeating behavior in a sample of convicted offenders. Scientific reports, 12(1), 2254.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06305-5

Gualano, R.J.*, Jiang, L.*, Zhang, K.*, Won, A. S., and Azenkot, S. (2023). “Invisible Illness Is No Longer Invisible”: Making Social VR Avatars More Inclusive for Invisible Disability Representation. In The 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility(ASSETS ’23), October 22–25, 2023, New York, NY, USA.

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Breakout

Part 1: Head to readyplayer.me and spend 5 minutes creating an avatar!
Part 2: Discuss how you customized your avatars. Why did you choose different features? Do they look like your non-virtual selves? Why or why not?

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How do we behave in social VR?

We respect personal space
We react to eye contact
We are influenced by nonverbal behavior

Llobera, J., Spanlang, B., Ruffini, G., & Slater, M. (2010). Proxemics with multiple dynamic characters in an immersive virtual environment. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP), 8(1), 3.

Bailenson, J. N., Blascovich, J., Beall, A. C., & Loomis, J. M. (2001). Equilibrium theory revisited: Mutual gaze and personal space in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 10(6), 583-598.

Bailenson, J. N., & Yee, N. (2005). Digital chameleons: Automatic assimilation of nonverbal gestures in immersive virtual environments. Psychological science, 16(10), 814-819.

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What are the benefits?

Connecting remote participants
Allowing for novel interactions with digital content
Optimizing social interactions
Allowing for perspective-taking and experience sharing
Allowing for reflection and information sharing

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What does VR look in your life? Why does it matter?

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Pokemon GO, Movies in VR, Podcasts, Shows, Concerts, Roblox, Conferences

Who has heard of Roblox

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Breakout

Who would you want to see in concert in VR?

If you had to choose to experience something in VR that you couldn’t in the non-virtual world, what would it be?

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What are the risks?

Privacy

Loss of trust

Reduced connection to the physical world

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Accessibility Considerations

What is accessibility?

Removing or minimizing barriers. Allowing people from different groups to access the same experiences.

Ways VR supports access
Ways VR creates barriers

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Demo Time! Any volunteers?

What are the differences between behavior, especially nonverbal behavior, in face-to-face interactions compared to virtual ones?

What (if anything) seems better in VR?
What (if anything) seems worse in VR?

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How to Spatial

Make an account on Spatial.io
Connect to: https://www.spatial.io/s/COMM-1101-65275a44138348e55b116ba6?share=6891780168676634251
Once you join set your avatar to your ready player me avatar

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Thank you! Questions?

Ask away or find out more at virtualembodimentlab.com