Determining principles for the development of virtual environments for future clinical applications

The aim of the present research was to determine a range of principles for the development of virtual natural environments (VNEs), using low-cost commercial-off-the-shelf simulation technologies, for bedside and clinical healthcare applications. A series of studies have been conducted to systematically investigate different aspects of the VNEs on a wide variety of participants, ranging from undergraduate and postgraduate students, hospital patients and clinicians, to West Country villagers. The results of these studies suggest that naturalistic environmental spatial sounds can have a positive impact on user ratings of presence and stress levels. High visual fidelity and real-world-based VNEs can increase participants’ reported ratings of presence, quality and realism. The choice of input devices also has a significant impact on usability with these types of virtual environment (VE). Overall, the findings provide a strong set of principles supporting the future development of VNEs. Highly transferrable tools and techniques have also been developed in order to investigate the exploitation of new digital technology approaches in the generation of believable and engaging real-time, interactive virtual natural environments that can be modified and updated relatively easily, thereby delivering a system that can be regularly modified and updated to meet the needs of individual patients.