Challenges of Recreating Reality in Virtual Environments

Virtual environments (VE), also known as virtual reality (VR), have been used in exposure treatment of phobias by simulating a situation that the patient fears. Initial studies of these treatments have demonstrated effectiveness of treatment, but have not compared it to the "gold standard" of in vivo exposure. We are in the process of comparing VE exposure treatment for acrophobia to in vivo exposure treatment by replicating an actual in vivo exposure environment in a virtual model. Our design of both experimental system and experimental protocol aims to extract the essential, unique aspects of the VE experience that make it different from traditional treatment, and to increase our understanding of how these relate to the psychological history that people bring to such encounters. Besides the challenges of protocol design, this process also provides an illustration of the challenges of working with rapidly changing hardware and software standards, as we are attempting to use state-of-theart equipment and ...