Maria Roussou

TL;DR: This article explores central thread in learning, play, as well as an essentialcharacteristic of virtual reality environments: interactivity, andritical review of examples of immersive virtual reality worldreated for children, with particular attention given to the role and nature of interactivity.

TL;DR: This paper analyzes the interactive virtual environments developed at an institution of informal education and discusses the issues involved in developing immersive interactive virtual archaeology projects for the broad public.

TL;DR: This evaluation suggests that involving users and designers from the beginning improves the effectiveness of the VE in the context of the real world urban planning project, and demonstrates that appropriate levels of realism are significant for the design process and for communicating about designs.

TL;DR: Results suggest that the fully interactive VE aided children in problem solving but did not provide a strong evidence of conceptual change as expected; rather, it was the passive VR environment, where activity was guided by a virtual robot, that seemed to support student reflection and recall, leading to indications of conceptual changes.

TL;DR: It is argued that it is important to enhance the perception of realism, achieved both through photorealistic and non-photorealistic visualisation approaches, with interactivity, as illustrated by two example projects which develop prototype virtual environments created for specialists as well as novice users.