Abstract
Rapidly changing customer demands, regulations and technologies drive the complexity of products, processes and production systems, as well as shorter product and factory lifecycles. In order to handle such complexity while decreasing the time-to-market, immersive virtual reality (VR) technologies are increasingly being used in industry to support product and factory lifecycle engineering processes, such as (re)design, validation and verification, learning and training. However, the design and development of multi-user VR training for complex and manual production processes remain a challenge for industry. The integration of VR training simulations with virtual and physical factories could support the handling of such obstacles in terms of efficiency and effectiveness by increasing the precision, accuracy and reliability of data used in VR simulations. In this study, we present a collaborative and coordinated VR training model and its data integration with virtual factory tools and manufacturing execution systems for a wind turbine assembly scenario. A demonstration has been performed and evaluated by industry experts. The preliminary evaluation results show that integrated collaborative VR training has significant potential for more efficient and effective training, as well as enabling new use cases for industry.

Abstract
Virtual Reality (VR) has been evolving over the years, becoming more and more accessible, in a wide area of applications. One of these areas where VR can have a major impact is training and certification. Hydrogen vehicles are becoming a reality and first responders still lack proper tools and resources to train emergency responses for the purpose. VR can play here a crucial role in ensuring a proper hydrogen emergency response training due to the advantages associated with VR training programs such as resource optimization, repeatability, and replicability. This paper proposes using VR for hydrogen emergency response training by developing a solution composed of three components: tutorial mode, training mode, and certification mode. A usability study is further conducted to evaluate its usability and user satisfaction. The results show that the use of this application regards usability and user satisfaction were extremely positive.

Abstract
Innovations in virtual reality have boosted their use for business purposes and personal consumption. The main objective of this technology is to transport the user to virtual environments. The use of avatars to replace the user's body in these environments increases the levels of presence and embodiment of the user. Through the inverse kinematics it is possible to animate the avatars according to the data obtained in sensors scattered around the user's body, replicating the movements in a avatar. These sensors can vary in number offering different levels of fidelity in the tracking of the human body. In this paper, we study the impact of the number of sensors used in the presence of the user and in the embodiment of the avatar, using three, five and six tracking points. The results show that there is no statistically significant differences in presence nor in any of its sub-scale, however one can observe a positive trend in the 6-points conditions. As for embodiment, the results show that there is statistically signifficant differences in some of presence sub-scales, namelly tactile sensation, response and in the embodiment as a whole.

Abstract
Multiple factors can affect presence in virtual environments, such as the number of human senses engaged in a given experience or the extent to which the virtual experience is credible. The purpose of the present work is to study how the inclusion of credible multisensory stimuli affects the sense of presence, namely, through the use of wind, passive haptics, vibration, and scent. Our sample consisted of 37 participants (27 men and 10 women) whose ages ranged from 17 to 44 years old and were mostly students. The participants were divided randomly into 3 groups: Control Scenario (visual and auditory - N = 12), Passive Haptic Scenario (visual, auditory, and passive haptic - N = 13) and Multisensory Scenario (visual, auditory, wind, passive haptic, vibration, and scent - N = 12). The results indicated a significant increase in the involvement subscale when all multisensory stimuli were delivered. We found a trend where the use of passive haptics by itself has a positive impact on presence, which should be the subject of further work.

Abstract
Promotional 360 degrees videos are now widely used to promote touristic sites, giving consumers a more immersive glimpse of what they can expect from those places. However, these 360 degrees videos often comprise so much information that it overloads the users, not allowing them to benefit from such a rich multimedia experience. To overcome this issue, we propose and evaluate a novel method that allows the experience of immersive 360 degrees promotional videos to be more interactive and informative without overloading users. The evaluation study focuses on how the proposed interaction method performs versus the non-interactive method in terms of user satisfaction, presence, and cybersickness in both a low-immersive (computer monitor) setup and an immersive platform (head-mounted display (HMD)). Our sample (N = 50) was randomly divided into four groups: 360 degrees (computer monitor without interaction), 360 degrees Interaction (computer monitor with interaction), IVR360 degrees (HMD without interaction) and IVR360 degrees Interaction (HMD with interaction). The results show that the novel proposed method is preferred by users over the non-interactive approach regardless of the setup (low-immersive or immersive). For cybersickness, there were no differences across all the experimental scenarios. We conclude that our method has the potential to bring added value to touristic promotion when compared to conventional promotional approaches.

Abstract
The goal of this study is to examine the effects of the sense of presence and immersive tendencies on learning outcomes while comparing different media formats (Interactive VR, Non-interactive VR and Video). An experiment was conducted with 36 students that watched a Biology lesson about the human cells. Contrary to expected, the results demonstrate that the Non-interactive VR was the most successful format. Sense of presence and immersive tendencies did not have an effect on learning gain, and the latter was not a critical factor to experience the sense of presence. The findings provide empirical evidence to help understand the influence of these variables on learning in VR. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.