Scope

Evidence over the past three decades suggests that people tend to respond realistically to situations and events in immersive virtual environments (VR). Therefore, VR provides a platform for the scientific study of human behaviour under conditions that with both ecologically and external validity. Moreover, people can experience situations and events that are either impossible, too dangerous, or ethically inappropriate to experience in reality. Moreover, VR can be used to study behaviour in situations that truly are impossible in reality, but which nevertheless can have an impact on how people behave in reality – such as gender or other-race embodiment studies.  

The scope of this journal section is the use of VR and Augmented Reality, for the study of human behaviour across a broad spectrum. Interest may focus on behaviour that is specifically relevant to VR (for example, the illusion of presence, body ownership, agency), or topics such as learning and skills transfer from virtual to real-world performance.

Generally, we encourage contributions that include experimental studies where VR or AR play an intrinsic and essential role in the discovery of new knowledge or data, and where typically such discovery would not be possible, or would be very difficult without these immersive media. The journal is also open to descriptions of novel applications, where, VR or AR can be used to solve real-world problems, or enhance our scientific understanding of the world. For example, novel techniques in data visualisation using VR or AR would be of interest. The use of immersive technologies raise very important ethical and legal issues. Who controls the environments? How should they be safely deployed? This journal also welcomes articles on the ethical, philosophical and legal aspects of the deployment of immersive systems. 

Hence some examples of the scope are:

• Studies of the responses of people to VR, such as presence, embodiment, agency, physiological changes, behavioural and attitude changes, but not limited to these. 

• Impact of VR exposure on real life performance, such as skills transfer.

• Novel methods of immersive data visualisation.

• Philosophical and ethical considerations of the dissemination and widespread use of immersive technology.

• Novel applications of immersive technology, especially those that go beyond traditional uses of VR or AR as simulators of real-world situations and events.

Submission

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