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The purpose of this paper is to contribute a framework that explains how value is formed during the usage of immersive technologies in industrial contexts.

Drawing on activity theory and a customer-dominant logic, the authors tentatively develop an activity-centric framework for value formation enabled by physical and mental activities conducted by users of immersive technologies. The authors evaluate the framework through a case study focusing on the use of virtual reality (VR) in an industrial setting.

The findings from the case study illustrate the tentative framework and specify how it is enacted by users in the studied context through three physical activities constituted by a set of actions and reflected in five emotional responses.

Both researchers and practitioners may use the framework presented in this paper as a guide for further academic and practical developments concerning the value of immersive technologies such as VR and augmented reality.

The activity-centric framework contributes a novel perspective to the literature on value formation enabled by immersive technologies.

In this study, a critical literature review was utilized in order to provide a clear review of the relevant existing studies. The literature was analyzed using the meta-synthesis technique to evaluate and integrate the findings in a single context.

Digital transformation in construction requires employing a wide range of various technologies. There is significant progress of research in adopting technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, and immersive technologies in the construction industry over the last two decades. The purpose of this research is to assess the current status of employing UAVs and immersive technologies toward digitalizing the construction industry and highlighting the potential applications of these technologies, either individually or in combination and integration with each other.

The key findings are: (1) UAVs in conjunction with 4D building information modeling (BIM) can be used to assess the project progress and compliance checking of geometric design models, (2) immersive technologies can be used to enable controlling construction projects remotely, applying/checking end users’ requirements, construction education and team collaboration.

A detailed discussion around the application of UAVs and immersive technologies is provided. This is expected to support gaining an in-depth understanding of the practical applications of these technologies in the industry.

The review contributes a needed common basis for capturing progress made in UAVs and immersive technologies to date and assessing their impact on construction projects. Moreover, this paper opens a new horizon for novice researchers who will conduct research toward digitalized construction.

Emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), have been influencing both the tourism supply side and tourists alike. The purpose of this study is to analyse VR research in tourism and to provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review. As the technological connotation of the term VR has been changing and encompasses various VR systems with different capabilities, this paper aims to provide a systematic and structured overview. The overall objective of this paper is to contribute to a thorough understanding of VR research in tourism.

This paper comprehensively reviews and analyses existing literature on VR in tourism, published from 1994 to February 2018. Using a wide variety of sources, these papers were examined so as to give a state-of-the-art literature review and to deepen one’s understanding of the diverse applications of VR in a tourism context. This paper also presents a novel classification of different VR systems according to the level of immersion and depicts their respective technological capabilities.

The advent of new VR hardware necessitates a distinction for different VR systems applied in the tourism sector. Research conducted during the past three years has been focussing on the application of head-mounted displays, which reflects the temporal development of VR technology. Regardless of the VR system, most studies examine VR as a marketing tool for promotion and communication purposes during the pre-travel phase, focussing on behavioural aspects. Advances in technology will yield new opportunities and application possibilities for the tourism industry.

The key contribution of this paper lies in its structural approach, which differentiates between non-, semi- and fully immersive VR systems in tourism, as well as the proposition of respective definitions. The concluding part of the paper proposes practical implications for tourism businesses together with directions for future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify three key areas where autistic people may find themselves impacted through COVID-19, namely, education; employment; and anxiety.

This paper provides some views based on the extensive experience of using immersive technologies for the utilisation and application with autistic groups during COVID-19.

This paper offers some examples of immersive technology application that might be helpful for practitioners, services and others to consider in overcoming possible challenges faced by people with autism.

This opinion piece offers expert insights to the role immersive technologies and virtual reality might play during COVID-19 in the lives of autistic groups.

This study aims to investigate how media content consumed through immersive technology may evoke changes in human rights attitudes. It has been proposed that our inability to empathize with others could be overcome by stepping into another's shoes. “Immersive journalism” has been postulated as being able to place us into the shoes of those whose feelings and experiences are distant to us. While virtual reality (VR) and 360-degree news videos have become widely available, it remains unclear how the consumption of content through immersive journalism affects users' attitudes.

Utilizing a between-subject laboratory-controlled experiment (N = 87) this study examined participant scores on the Human Rights Questionnaire before and after consuming 360-degree video immersive journalism content via VR (n = 31), 2D (n = 29), and Article (n = 27) formats. Collected data were analysed using statistical inference.

Results indicate that immersive journalism can elicit a positive attitudinal change in users, unlike an Article, with mobile VR having a more prominent effect than a 2D screen. Furthermore, this change is more strongly affected by users' higher Involvement in the content.

These findings are relevant for grasping the distinct effects novel and recently popularized technologies and media have on attitudinal change, as well as inform the current debate on the value of VR as “empathy machines”.

This chapter addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant observation conducted among analytics workers at a digital publishing network, I find that analytics workers appear paradoxically autonomous and empowered by management while being bound by ever-evolving, calculative cloud-based information and communication technologies (ICTs). Workers appear free to “be creative,” while ever-evolving ICTs exert unpredictable control over work. Based on this finding, I argue that sociology’s tendency to take organizational boundaries and technological stability for granted hampers analyses of contemporary forms of work. Thus, sociologists of work must extend outward – beyond communities of practice, labor markets, and the state – to include the ever-evolving, infrastructural, socio-technical networks in which work and organizations are embedded. Additionally, research on the experience of immaterial labor suggests that ICTs afford pleasurably immersive experiences that bind workers to organizations and their fields. Complicating this emerging body of research, I find workers acutely frustrated by these unpredictable, ever-evolving, cloud-based ICTs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate possibilities to adopt state-of-the-art computer graphics technologies for big data visualization in engineering applications. Toward this purpose, a conceptual heterogeneous system is proposed for graphical rendering, which is established with multiple central processing unit cores and multiple graphics processing unit GPUs.

The design of the system supports both general-purpose computation and graphics-related computation. Three processing components are discussed to fulfill the execution requirements in load balancing, data streaming and display. This design fully uses computational and memory resources and enhances the performance with the support of GPU-based parallelization.

The advantages and disadvantages of particular technical methods for each processing component are discussed. The possible ways to integrate them are analyzed.

This work has contributions of using computer graphics technologies in engineering applications.

This chapter highlights our survey that identifies faculty recommendations for incorporating emerging digital technologies to deliver eLearning content in online courses that help students learn more effectively. Results from the survey, which includes a sample of 478 online faculty at two higher education institutions, are presented.

In the findings of the survey, respondents identified several instructional technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and artificial intelligence (AI) as being on the cusp of changing learner engagement options and could soon become standard tools for the online course environment. While respondents predict an acceleration of new technology activity, they also caution that these technologies need a strong pedagogical foundation to match student needs and generate new use-learning real case scenarios.

This sentiment implies a more systematic approach to problem-solving that follows a process of identifying and refining multiple options to determine best practices for faculty preparation and staff development. The results of the survey included in this chapter are a directional means to help instructors and course designers explain what is relevant and exciting about techniques that can be employed and identify and use the emerging technological tools that enhance the delivery of instruction while meeting the ever-changing and dynamic needs of today’s learners.

This paper aims to explore the opportunities and challenges that immersive virtual reality (VR) technologies pose for archival theory and practice.

This conceptual paper reviews research on VR adoption in information institutions and the preservation challenges of VR to identify ways in which VR has the potential to disrupt existing archival theory and practice.

Existing archival approaches are found to be disrupted by the multi-layered structural characteristics of VR, the part–whole relationships between the technological elements of VR environments and the three-dimensional content they contain and the immersive, experiential nature of VR experiences. This paper argues that drawing on perspectives from phenomenology and digital materiality is helpful for addressing the preservation challenges of VR.

The findings extend conceptualizations of preservation by identifying gaps in existing preservation approaches to VR and stressing the importance of “experience” as a central element of archival practice and by emphasizing the embodied dimensions of interpreting archival records and the multiple scales of materiality that archival researchers and practitioners should consider to preserve VR.

These findings provide guidance for digital curators and preservationists by outlining the current thinking on VR preservation and the impact of VR on digital preservation strategies.

This paper gives new insight into VR as an emerging area of concern to digital curation and preservation and expands archival thinking with new conceptualizations that disrupt existing paradigms.

Hybrid structures are emerging in the leisure sector that are neither museums nor amusement parks, but which borrow elements from both. Dedicated to the exploration of a cultural theme (cultural heritage, ecosystems and historic events), they use experiential marketing levers to entertain large publics while at the same time pursuing the cultural integrity of heritage. This study aims to examine how visitors perceive and experience the offer proposed by these hybrid museums and how they manage the dual (cognitive and sensorial) stimulation. The authors then consider the extent to which the experiential levers used to dramatize these venues help to deliver a unique experience.

The authors developed a qualitative approach based on a case study methodology. The authors first selected the case studies (the Cité du Vin – a wine museum in Bordeaux, France and the Cité de l’Océan – a museum dedicated to the ocean at Biarritz, France) and analysed them from two angles. The authors began by examining the managerial perspective from secondary data to identify the experiential levers used by providers and the promises made to visitors in terms of experience. The authors then analysed the visitors’ experiences through a netnographic approach. The data were drawn from visitor reviews of their experience as posted on Tripadvisor.

The authors show that hybrid museums manage to provide visitors with edutainment value, but the promise made by managers for a memorable experience by way of an immersive journey is not kept. The authors demonstrate that a hybrid museum environment contains certain elements that prevent visitors from enjoying immersion. More specifically, the authors note issues regarding the way the theme is expressed through spectacular buildings, the way visitors are free to choose their visit and the scenarization presented through digital devices. The authors also show that hybrid museums are perceived largely as traditional museums and so are subject to culturally-established preconceptions.

This contribution concerns a topic that has drawn little attention in the marketing literature, namely, hybrid museums. The authors adopted a qualitative methodology from the perspective of both the provider and the consumer to gain a global understanding of the hybrid museum. The data were analysed using a manual thematic analysis, completed with a QDAS to support the findings.