On this page you will find a list of software that I have made, most of them being 3D environments used in my research (built on Unity3D with C#).
If you want to get one of these environment or just learn more about them, contact me. You can either run the build .exe in windows or get the source code (under conditions),
and depending on your project (i.e if you are a student and/or the project is socially helpful) I can help modifying the environment or building on a different platform (mobile, mac, linux).
Virtual reality 3D environments:
Spaceshooter: a first person shooter in a western-like virtual environments.
PhiVR a small tool used to i) describe the user profile in VR ii) quantify immersion and iii) predict user experience.
Multipic a tool used to assess the inhibition skill of bilingual children.
None of these tools collect data externally. It is the user's responsability to ensure that all human data are protected and ethically gathered.
All software licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Space Shooter
A 13.5 minutes virtual immersion into a Space Shooter, using track controller turned into a pistol (1 shot per second). The train moves at 0.5m per second, which is a very slow linear visual flow (or very slow walk pace), but can be changed to induce cybersickness.
5 different possible conditions: normal, easy, hard, flexible, anxiogen. Normal and anxiogen have the same difficulty level, but anxiogen is more obscure and dark. Difficulty influences the health points of the enemy and their fire rate. In flexible difficulty, the difficulty adapts to the performance of the player. In the example video which follows, the difficulty is set to "flexible" at the most difficult level (because I'm very good at the game, which is a priviliege of making it). At "normal" difficulty, aliens have 3HP and fires every 1.5 to 3 seconds, randomly.
An automatic tutorial teachs the participant how to play the game, and gives all the objective (protect the train by shooting at the enemies and their projectiles). The game stops automatically at the end. Press "Esc" to pause.
Recorded variables: number of projectiles hitting the train, player's code (name), number of shots fired (player), number of shots landed (player), number of projectiles neutralized, average difficulty (flexible condition only), headtracking (15 Hz). Exports to .csv
A very standard HMD supported rod and frame test in virtual reality, originally developed by Witkin et al. 1948 in order to assess field dependence. Procedure is fully described in this paper
16 trials, with a systematic counter balancing of the rod and frame rotation: -27°/+18°, -27/-18°, +27/-18°, +27°/+18° x2
Enter participant's code before beginning. Instructions are presented (audio + image) in French but can easily be modified or removed. Automatically export data (absolute °) in .csv with the date and time.
Starwalker
Starwalker is a research and clinical virtual reality video games platform project for a population of children with kinesiophobia. Kinesiophobia is defined as "an excessive, irrational and debilitating fear of movement and physical activity resulting from a sense of vulnerability to a painful injury or painful news" (Vlaeyen & Crombez, 2009). This phenomenon is at the heart of the pain chronicisiation process, generates significant anxiety as well as avoidance behaviours that may ultimately be responsible for the persistence of pain problems. For a complete review of kinesiophobia and avoidance behaviors, see (Conradi & Masselin-Dubois, 2019).
Virtual reality is now seen as a promising tool in motor rehabilitation. A meta-analysis even presents virtual rehabilitation therapies as more effective than traditional therapies (Howard, 2017), and its effectiveness in some cases of kinesiophobia has been demonstrated (Chen et al., 2016; Yelvar et al., 2017). In addition, the analgesic effect of virtual reality is also known, notably thanks to Hoffman's pioneering work on patients with severe burns (Hoffman & Patterson, 1996; Hoffman et al., 2000, Shahrbanian et al., 2009; Malloy et al., 2010, Hoffman et al., 2011; Arane et al., 2017). Burn patients with extreme levels of pain were immersed in a virtual world called SnowWorld. They reported reduced levels of pain following particularly painful dressing operations. This pain distraction effect is often attributed to the sense of presence: the feeling that one is, in virtual reality, actually present in the virtual environment rather than the physical one (Heeter, 1991; Sheridan, 1992). The sense of presence is defined in the Traité de la Réalité Virtuelle as the cognitive, motor and perceptual positioning of the subject between the real and the virtual world (Mestre et al., 2006) and is at the heart of virtual reality.
The combination of the advances of virtual reality in rehabilitation and in pain reduction makes virtual reality a particularly interesting tool to accompany and help child patients in their lower limb kinesiophobia. Two other points should be highlighted in the contributions of virtual reality: firstly, it is a strong phenomenological experience which can offer children playful applications that probably provoke greater commitment from their part (Won et al., 2017). Secondly, a concept related to proprioception and the psychology of perception seems particularly relevant in the case of virtual reality kinesiophobia: the "sense of embodiment", the sensation of owning, being and controlling a body (Kilteni et al., 2012). It would indeed be interesting to see if the subjects, visually cut off from their problematic limbs, would increase their capacities and amplitudes of movement via the control of a virtual avatar.
More pragmatically, Starwalker is mini-games platform where participants interact with the virtual environment with their feet using the 3DRudder, althought Starwalker can also be played using a standart hand controller. The player is immersed in virtual reality and must catch or avoid objects, shoot at aliens, play bowling or pool against the computer. The program, developed in C# on Unity by the authors is currently in beta version. This version will be installed for first tests at the Centre d'Evaluation et de Traitement de la Douleur at the Clémenceau Hospital. The equipment (3DRudder, HTC-Vive head mounted display and computer) was financed by a Pièces Jaunes project. This project is under the CC-BY-SA licensing, so feel free to contact me if you want to try the software or take part in the project.
The structures:
The Pain Assessment and Treatment Center (Centre d’Evaluation et de Traitement de la Douleur, CETD), attached to the Specialty Medicine Center, is located on the site of the Clémenceau Hospital (Caen). The center treats outpatients suffering from chronic pain. The CETD also receives inpatients for consultation, advice or assessment in order to give an opinion on treatments and to guide their pain management after discharge.
The Interdisciplinary Center for Virtual Reality (Centre Interdisciplinaire de Réalité Virtuelle, CIREVE) is a technical platform of the University of Caen Normandy created in March 2006 and attached since the 1st January 2012 to the UFR "Humanities and Social Sciences". It is the result of the "virtual reality" activity carried out since 1994 around the work of restitution of ancient Rome ("Plan of Rome" team, now integrated into ERLIS).
Its main missions are :
Pooling of virtual reality equipment (clusters, projectors, screens, interfaces, etc.).
The pooling of skills and the organisation of training courses.
The promotion and support of the use of virtual reality in research in the human and social sciences as well as in the exact and experimental sciences.
Alexandre Rousseau for the very first tests of the game.
Mysticreator on Sketchfab (Cikitta) for the avatar model and animation.
Nicholas Veselov (#NVJOB) on GitHub for the water shaders.
Richard Whitelock for the skyboxes.
SimpleModels for the handtorches.
Adam Bielecki for the Milky Way.
Highground Assets for the Bowling Kegel & Ball.
Tamarin Studios for the Western Pack.
Herminio Nieves for the Wraith Raider Starship.
VGL for the recording of the video teaser.
References:
Arane, K., Behboudi, A., & Goldman, R. D. (2017). La réalité virtuelle pour la prise en charge de la douleur et de l’anxiété chez l’enfant. Canadian Family Physician, 63(12), 935‑937.
Chen, K. B., Sesto, M. E., Ponto, K., Leonard, J., Mason, A., Vanderheiden, G., Williams, J., & Radwin, R. G. (2017). Use of Virtual Reality Feedback for Patients with Chronic Neck Pain and Kinesiophobia. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 25(8), 1240‑1248. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2016.2621886
Conradi, S., & Masselin-Dubois, A. (2019). La kinésiophobie et le modèle d’évitement de la peur de la douleur dans l’évaluation psychologique. Douleurs : Évaluation - Diagnostic - Traitement, 20(4), 151‑157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.douler.2018.12.005
Heeter, C. (1992). Being There : The Subjective Experience of Presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(2), 262‑271. https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.1992.1.2.262.
Hoffman, H. G., Chambers, G. T., Meyer, W. J., Arceneaux, L. L., Russell, W. J., Seibel, E. J., Richards, T. L., Sharar, S. R., & Patterson, D. R. (2011). Virtual Reality as an Adjunctive Non-pharmacologic Analgesic for Acute Burn Pain During Medical Procedures. Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, 41(2), 183‑191. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-010-9248-7
Hoffman, H. G., Patterson, D. R., & Carrougher, G. J. (2000). Use of Virtual Reality for Adjunctive Treatment of Adult Burn Pain During Physical Therapy : A Controlled Study. The Clinical Journal of Pain, 16(3), 244–250.
Howard, M. C. (2017). A meta-analysis and systematic literature review of virtual reality rehabilitation programs. Computers in Human Behavior, 70, 317‑327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.01.013.
Malloy, K. M., & Milling, L. S. (2010). The effectiveness of virtual reality distraction for pain reduction : A systematic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(8), 1011‑1018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.07.001.
Sheridan, T. B. (1992). Musings on Telepresence and Virtual Presence. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(1), 120‑126. https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.1992.1.1.120.
Vlaeyen, J. W. S., & Crombez, G. (2009). La psychologie de la peur et de la douleur. Revue du Rhumatisme, 76(6), 511‑516. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rhum.2009.03.004.
Wiederhold, B. K., & Riva, G. (2009). Annual Review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine 2009 : Advanced Technologies in the Behavioral, Social and Neurosciences. IOS Press.
Yilmaz Yelvar, G. D., Çırak, Y., Dalkılınç, M., Parlak Demir, Y., Guner, Z., & Boydak, A. (2017). Is physiotherapy integrated virtual walking effective on pain, function, and kinesiophobia in patients with non-specific low-back pain? Randomised controlled trial. European Spine Journal, 26(2), 538‑545. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-016-4892-7
Spatial cognition evaluation
The spatial cognition evaluation is a HMD supported virtual environment.
This environment has been used for my PhD thesis in order to i) measure the impact of the sense
of presence and cybersickness on performance in virtual reality and ii) evaluate the dynamic aspect of
field dependence and visual re-weighting in virtual reality. These two studies were both published in Frontiers in
Virtual Reality (Study 1 and Study 2). This virtual environment has 5 scenes that automatically play.
0 is a tutorial during which the participant can learn how to move in and interact with the virtual environment.
1 is a visit in the virtual environment, made of buildings from the Ancient Rome. Wood signs lead the way. The participant has to open some doors in order to reach the final point. But there are also "wrong" doors, which are closed. T
All the wrongs doors tried are automatically recorded, along with the participant's position (4 times / seconds) and the duration.
2 is a spatial cognition assessment. In the virtual environment, the participant is asked different question about what he saw or not during the visit. All the answers are automatically recorded.
3 is a new visit in the same virtual environment than 1, but the wood signs are gone. Participant is asked to redo the visit he has done in 1. All the wrongs doors tried are automatically recorded, along with the participant's position (4 times / seconds) and the duration.
4 is a a final question of spatial cognition evaluation, based on the second visit.
PhiVR
A project of a free open-source software designed to help virtual reality users
The PhiVR project was originally conceived during my PhD Thesis. It is based on the data from three experimental studies (Neuropresence, Spatiopresence, Edupresence) and the elaboration of a theoretical model (the Angle Phi model) of the relationship between human factors, system factors and performance in VR. The idea is to help researchers evaluate the immersive power of a system and / or environment, but also to assess an individual's cognitive profile and his or her ability to adapt to VR. This can be done in order to evaluate a priori the users who will benefit the most from VR, or a posteriori in order to standardize data.
The software operation is simple and consists of three parts:
the user describes his/her immersive system by answering questions. This system is then evaluated based on a few components and a reliability score.
the user describes the cognitive profile of the individual evaluated, which is then evaluated based on a few components and a reliability score.
the user computes the predicted experience of the individual, based on the interactions between the system factors components and the human factors components. This user experience is composed of the expected level of cybersickness, the expected complexity of the interface, and the expected level of sense of presence.
A global score is given, which can be used either to control for a posteriori data or evaluate a priori which individual can make the most of VR.
Project development
This software is currently in Alpha version. For the moment, the computation requires the use of empirical data, either from the tested environment and the individual (using validated questionnaires).
Future development will probably try to make PhiVR an independent software, which relies on independent question. It will also add the ecological dimension evaluation (Angle Phi's model) for a better consideration of the presence x performance relationship.
Finally, with enough data, this software which is for now based on subjective interpretation of empirical data, might turn into a self learning machine learning program. Indeed, the random forest algorithms seem truly adapted to such processes.
The purpose is to keep it simple, free and open-source in order to allow as many people as possible to benefit from it. The source code will be accessible as soon as the code is cleaned up and stable.
If development continues, versions for MacOS and Linux will be developed.
If you have any suggestions, questions, collaborations or data that could help the development of this software, please contact me.
Software computation
Each question (with the exception of a few bimodal questions) has 4 potential values (1, 2, 3, 4). Each of them can be skipped if the user does not have the answer, but skipping a question decreases the reliability of the computation.
System factors are composed by 4 components (System quality, Environment quality, Interface quality, Cybersickness induction) composed by the sums of the values of 26 questions. System factors reliability score is the sum of the unaswered questions.
Human factors are composed by 3 components (Video game experience, Cybersickness susceptibility, Sense of presence susceptibility) composed by the sums of the values of 16 questions. Human factors reliability score is the sum of the unanswered questions.
User experience is composed by 3 components (Expected cybersickness, Expected interface ergonomics, Expected sense of presence). User experience reliability score is the product of the first two reliability scores.
Expected cybersickness is the product of the mathematical mean of [Cybersickness induction, System quality] and [Video game experience, Cybersickness susceptibility].
Expected interface ergonomics is the product of [Interface quality] and [Video game experience].
Expected sense of presence is the product of the mathematical mean of [System quality, Environment quality] and [Video game experience, Sense of presence susceptibility].
Global expected user experience is the sum of [Expected Cybersickness, Expected interface ergonomics, Expected sense of presence].
Multipic
Multipic is a Unity3D (optimized for android, pad resolution) software. It is used to measure inhibition skills among bilinguals chidlren.
First, the participant enters the name of the participant. Then, the participant writes his or her name.
During the first part, Multipic will randomly present 50 drawings, with 25 of them being cognates, and 25 of them non-cognates. All drawing are part of the multipic data base (https://www.bcbl.eu/databases/multipic/) from Duñabeitia et al. (2018). The participant has to orally give the name of the drawings.
After a little test, the second part starts: the participant has to write the name of the 50 item. However, 8 distractors (in english) are randomly placed around the drawing.
After the 50th drawing, the software automatically saves and stops. The name of the participant, each screen shot of the drawing, as well as the reaction time before starting to write a name are saved locally.
