krifin / pyschology

A Virtual Reality approach for eHospitals for treating Sociophobia.

A Virtual Reality approach for eHospitals

The specific problems we would like to start on relate to VR-type simulations for people with certain anxiety disorders in professional settings, such as speaking in front of a group at work or attending an interview. They see a large number of people with such issues (here we are talking about people who avoid such interactions because of severe anxiety, not the normal nervousness that most people face).

Technologies used:

• Unity3D Game Engine (v5.6)
• Oculus SDK
• Unit Networking

Features to be developed:

More features to be introduced as the project progresses ...

• Create a scene with a small number of people, like a typical team meeting or a small presentation in a company
• Server-client model, wherein majority of the controls, for controlling the movement, scale, and other factors of the augmented model, are present with the server model, which controls the scene in the client
• The patient uses a HMD to view the scene (the audience) - and simultaneously talk through the presentation
• As the person speaks, the audience indulges in actions (animated) such as yawning or showing lack of interest, distract the speaker by turning and talking to another person etc. These actions would be partly canned and partly controlled by a therapist. 3D sound is probably important.
• There would be some kind of playback mode where the speaker can see his/her performance from a third viewpoint. We hopefully track some movements of the speaker's head and record their talking, and use this during playback.