Experience assessment is a key activity for understanding and developing interactive systems and technologies. Virtual reality (VR) is no exception, considering its rising popularity and the increasing availability of affordable VR devices.
However, in experience studies where participants typical have to rate multiple test conditions presented to them, having to repeatedly take off the head mounted display (HMD) just for the purpose of issuing ratings is cumbersome and breaks the immersion.
As a solution we present VRate, a Unity3D asset to integrate subjective experience questionnaires directly in virtual reality environments.
The VRate module was presented at the QoMEX 2018 conference . The original publication is available through IEEE Xplorer - QoMEX X2018 . You can download a preprint of the paper: VRate: A Unity3D Asset for integrating Subjective Assessment Questionnaires in Virtual Environments . If you want to use the work please provide an appropriate attribution (citation). The bib-file can be downloaded: VRate Citation
The developed VRate module is provided (to the scientific community) under a Creative Commons License, Attribution, Non Commercial (CC BY-NC) .
For installation download the unitypackage file and add the package to your project. The questionnaire scene should be 0 in the build scene index. The other scenes can be added as 1 to 4 (or more if you add more scenes to the code in the externaltrigger.cs). There are some demo scenes in the folder demo scenes. This might be changed to a less hard coded version (by using e.g. a list of scenes) in a future version.
It is important that there is a JSON folder with a condition.json and a questionnaire.json available (at the same level as the assets directory). Otherwise there will be a crash (this is not very ellegant and thus it will be changed to a better exception handling in future versions.
The current version of the VRate assets uses the Virtual Reality Toolkit VRTK and the Steam VR Plugin
Currently VRTK version 3.1.0 is used. Please notice that the provided VRate package is only tested with Unity 5.6.X. To the best of our knowledge VRTK 3.1.0 and thus the VRate asset will not work with Unity 2017 and Unity 2018. This should be fixed in future versions, when we will upgrade to VRTK 3.2.0. Of course you can upgrade the VRTK framework yourself. Please follow the update VRTK instructions provided by VRTK. Also the Steam VR plugin can be changed to other VR frameworks.
Download the unitypackage file and add the package to your project. The questionnaire scene should be 0 in the build scene index. The other condtion scenes should be added with the build scene index 1 to 4 (or more if you add more scenes to the code in the externaltrigger.cs). There are some demo scenes in the folder demo scenes. This might be changed to a less static version (by using e.g. a list of scenes) in a future version.
It is important that there is a JSON folder with condition.json and questionnaire.json avaliable (at the same level as the assets directory), otherwise it will crash. This is not very ellegant and thus it will be changed to a better exception handling in future versions.
The current version of the VRate assets uses the Virtual Reality Toolkit VRTK and the Steam VR Plugin. Please notice that the provided VRate package is only tested with Unity 5.6.X. Currently VRTK version 3.1.0 is used. To the best of our knowledge VRTK 3.1.0 (and thus the VRate asset) will not work with Unity 2017 and Unity 2018. This should be fixed in future versions, when we will upgrade to VRTK 3.2.0. Of course you can upgrade the VRTK framework yourself. Please follow the update VRTK instructions provided by VRTK. Also the Steam VR plugin can be changed to other VR frameworks.
For help or feedback please contact Georg Regal .
This work has been partially funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (bmvit) in the Mobilitaet der Zukunft programme under grant number 860210 (”VR-Planning”) and by the City of Vienna through the Vienna Business Agency in the ”User im Focus”programme under grant number 1609083 (”NAFI 4.0”).
We would like to thank all project partners, and especially innovation.rocks, PlanSinn, and Frauenhofer Austria for their valuable work and contribution as well as for their effort.
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
Center for Technology Experience
Giefinggasse 2 | 1210 Vienna | Austria
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AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH
Center for Technology Experience
Giefinggasse 2 | 1210 Vienna | Austria
Service contact: technologyexperience [at] ait (dot) ac (dot) at
Fundamental aim: The AIT Austrian Institute of
Technology GmbH – Center for Technology Experience is the owner of this
website. The website is designed to provide information to the VRate Unity 3D Asset. This work was partially funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (bmvit) in the Mobilitaet der Zukunft programme under grant number 860210 (”VR-Planning”) and by the City of Vienna through the Vienna Business Agency in the ”User im Focus”programme under grant number 1609083 (”NAFI 4.0”).
Company register number: 115980 i
Court responsible for company register: Vienna Commercial Court
VAT reg. no.: ATU 14703506
Supervisory authority: Rechnungshof
Chamber: Economic Chamber Vienna
Purpose of business: Research and development projects of any kind including related services
Managing Directors: DI Anton Plimon, Univ.Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Knoll
Supervisory Board: Hannes Androsch (Chairman),
Maria Kubitschek(Deputy Chairman), Peter Koren (Deputy Chairman),
Mariana Karepova, Franz Michael Androsch, Anton Schantl, Hannah Glatz,
Harald Loos, Wolfgang Pell, Klaus Pseiner, Ingolf Schädler, Gustavo
Fernandez Dominguez, Christian Gärtner, Thomas Huger, Christina Tamas,
Eva Wilhelm, Hubert Umschaden
Shareholders: Republic of Austria (Ministry of
Transport, Innovation and Technology - BMVIT): 50.46%; Federation of
Austrian Industries: 49.54%