UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Immersive VR for investigating threat avoidance: The VRthreat toolkit for Unity

Brookes, Jack; Hall, Samson; Frühholz, Sascha; Bach, Dominik R; (2024) Immersive VR for investigating threat avoidance: The VRthreat toolkit for Unity. Behavior Research Methods , 56 (5) pp. 5040-5054. 10.3758/s13428-023-02241-y. Green open access

[thumbnail of Brookes et al. 2023 BRM VRthreat.pdf]
Preview
Text
Brookes et al. 2023 BRM VRthreat.pdf - Published Version

Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

All animals have to respond to immediate threats in order to survive. In non-human animals, a diversity of sophisticated behaviours has been observed, but research in humans is hampered by ethical considerations. Here, we present a novel immersive VR toolkit for the Unity engine that allows assessing threat-related behaviour in single, semi-interactive, and semi-realistic threat encounters. The toolkit contains a suite of fully modelled naturalistic environments, interactive objects, animated threats, and scripted systems. These are arranged together by the researcher as a means of creating an experimental manipulation, to form a series of independent “episodes” in immersive VR. Several specifically designed tools aid the design of these episodes, including a system to allow for pre-sequencing the movement plans of animal threats. Episodes can be built with the assets included in the toolkit, but also easily extended with custom scripts, threats, and environments if required. During the experiments, the software stores behavioural, movement, and eye tracking data. With this software, we aim to facilitate the use of immersive VR in human threat avoidance research and thus to close a gap in the understanding of human behaviour under threat.

Type: Article
Title: Immersive VR for investigating threat avoidance: The VRthreat toolkit for Unity
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-023-02241-y
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02241-y
Language: English
Additional information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords: VR; Decision-making; Motor control; Defensive behaviour; Threat avoidance; Research software
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208187
Downloads since deposit
7Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item