VR & Sensorimotor system

Lecture 5, buckingham, VR & sports

research benefits of VR

• benefit of training in a risk free enviroment

  • medical is very big

• but issue of phsycial harm

Communication

• wonderful medium for communication

• co-presence is shared

Sport science

• Learning new skills & understanding, observing, practicing

• can be made more interesting and give them statistics regarding their performance 

• use of VR as a training equipment has become popular 

Why study golf putting

• Real world importance for golfers

• dynamic visuomotor task 

  • can examine gaze, how long one has to look 

• intuitive kinematic measures

• easy to implement 

VR & Sensorimotor (Harris et al, 2020)

• VR is rapidly being adopted as a training method for visuomotor skills in sport

• VR can cause temporary disruptions to the quiet eye & putting accuracy

• Putting improvement was comparable between real-world & VR training

VR & Sport

• VR holds significant potential for training skilled behaviours & are currently receiving interest

Construct validity 

• important to consider when creating simulations

Issues with VR & Sport

• Perceptual deficiencies in VR like reduced haptic information & stereoscopic display distortions, may have an effect on learning and performance

• Specificity of learning theories suggest that VR could be ineffective due to differences between practice & real task performance conditions

Method (Harris et al, 2020)

• EXP 1 - Experts

  • Repeated measure design to assess putting accuracy & quiet eye duration of expert golfers on real putts before & after 40 VR warm-up puts

• EXP 2 - Novice

  • Novice golfers were assigned to either VR or RW putting training

  • assessed on a real-world retention test

• radical error (2d distance from hole) as primary outcome variable

Findings (Harris et al, 2020)

• Exp 1 - experts

  • Both visual guidance (quiet eye) & putting accuracy were disrupted temporarily when moving from VR to real putting

  • Experts put more accurately in VR in the reeal world

• Exp 2 

  • similar performance regarding the ability to underestimating in both VR & RW

  • RW & VR practice produced comparable improvements in putting accuracy in novice golfers

• Underlying skill structures can be learned in VR & transferred to the real-world

• perceptual deficiencies will place limits on the use of VR

• VR doesnt affect overall perfromance

• shows that has good construct validity 

What is needed for VR simulation to elicit effective transfer of training to the real world (Harris et al, 2021)

• It must provide a sufficient level of validity

  • It must be representative of the real-world skill

Methods (Harris et al, 2021)

• self-report feelings of presence to ensure simulation was sufficiently high physical fidelity 

• medical simulation to assess construct validity by comparing the performance of novices & experts in simulation

• VR app via Unity App

  • Tracker Sensory was attached to the head of a real putter

• Real world golf task vs VR golf training

Results (Harris et al, 2021)

• P found a good level of presence

  • but a high degree of variation across p

• a significant positive relationship between performance on the real and virtual tasks

• no difference in perceived putting distance between real-world and VR tasks

• putting the simulation was sufficiently representative of the real task to distinguish novice from expert performers

• VR performance is improved by VR but not real world training

• Real-world putting makes you better at real-world performance but VR didnt make you better at RW

Does VR improve performance (2020)

• whether wearing headset affects

• novice golfers 10 rw & 40 VR

• putting performances impaired immediately after VR training

• may be due to gaze perfomance

  • use of VR disrupts gaze

• behaviour breifly changes after VR

  • should not use VR before sports

Controller vs handle in VR (2020)

• controller, handle, weighted handle

• 60 novice golfers, 3 groups

• 10 RW baseline & 80 putts in VR

• No main effects of handle type

  • no improvement 

• VR training does not increase RW skills

Handtracking

• controllers can be used

  • detects how you hand folds

• optical hand tracking

  • measuring postions

ForeVR Darts - hand tracking vs controllers

• no main affects

• VR handtracking & VR controller training with RW application

• both groups ‘improved’ the same amount

  • no one is getting better 

• showed interaction method doesn’t seem to affect transfer to the real world

Would transfer of skills improve if we make VR more real  (Naylor et al., 202)

• Adding tactile cues to novice golfers

• Radial error performance was worse when there is a ball

  • ball overshooting was magnified

  • with no ball issues of overshooting was minimised

• performance adapts without ball

• clubhead speed on contact is slower

  • cannot tell whether its physics or VR for while the ball effects

• Tactical cues may impair performances

what is VR actually good for

• creating the mood

  • can test anxiety

  • opens it up to manipulation of emotion

• widening access to sport

  • allows for sports training

  • encouraging sports engagement

Dyspraxia

• chronic motor impairment

• 5% of school age (Zwicker et al, 2012)

• prevents engagement at games/sports

Rezzil football training & dyspraxia

• developing skills

• allowing kids to try sports in a safe enviroment

• allows kids to enjoy sports as its a core part of play