Introduction
Virtual Reality[1], also known as VR, is a
technique to simulate a real world with comprehensive application of
man-machine interact, multimedia, computer graphics
etc.[2] VR technique is immersive, interactive and
imaginative.[3] Immersive, indicates that virtual
environment stimulate human in vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch;
interactive means users have access to control and receive feedback;
imaginative means users can interpret the future based on immersion and
interaction. However, VR applications requires high performance on
computer hardware, while actual hardware performance in user devices
varies from each other. Stuck, decline in frame rate, or even crash may
occur under certain circumstances, which hardly raise the awareness of
developers if real-time monitoring on VR application is not realized,
resulting in poor user experience and loss of potential customers.
Man-machine interact in VR application is significantly different from
traditional application, mainly in terms of way of observe and control:[4]
Way of observe. Traditional scene is realized via a display with fixed
dimension. Users observe the scene via camera either in first person
view (point of view, or POV) or third person view (God view). VR
application on the contrary has no limitation from display. Users can
observe the scene freely through vision. Although there’s still the
concept of camera in VR, the limitation of observation resulted from
camera has significantly reduced.
Way of control. Keyboards, mouse and touch screen are typical means of
input in traditional man-machine interact, which is not practical in
VR man-machine interact since the vision is filled with virtual world,
and users have no eye contact with external input devices. It is
common way that users observe the virtual world from headset
equipment, and control by joystick.
In addition, thanks to the immersion of VR application, a more vivid
observation and more diverse interaction can be established. As a
result, analyzing user manner acts as a significant role in excavating
user demand as well as improving user experience. Furthermore, flaws in
VR application can be discovered and corrected by evaluating user
manner, improving application quality, strengthening user stickiness and
growing overall profit.[5]
Monitoring and testing on VR application receive fewer awareness
compared with VR technique itself for the time being. Major performance
monitoring platform in China (i.e. WeTest, Umeng, Toushibao) mainly
focus on mobile game application monitoring based on Unity 3D engine in
terms of application performance, user in-app purchase etc., while lack
of monitoring on VR applications.[6][7] For VR
application monitoring, Ghostline、Retinad VR and FishBowl VR are among
the most representative teams for the time
being.[8] Ghostline can monitor user interaction,
body condition and fluctuation in emotion, making it feasible to
discover user manner under VR environment thanks to its quantitative
analysis. However, monitoring the application performance and crash
issue via Ghostline is not practicable. RetinadVR, on the contrary,
collects application data including location, operating environment,
application performance, VR device information and so on in forms of a
Unity 3D plugin, while lack of awareness of user manner. FishBowlVR
applies a real-man approach. A technician is assigned to a developer
under actual demand raised by developer, and a comprehensive test report
can be generated based on real-man test on application.
To sum up, VR application has already possessed great variety and
applied in gaming, medical, tourism etc. thanks to its immersive,
interactive and imaginative. It is also promising that VR can cooperate
with BIM technology, which is being more and more popular in building
service industry. Design of interaction as well as choose of VR device
and development tool for VR application are different from each other
currently. In addition, it is difficult for developers to establish
real-time monitoring on VR application performance in user hardware
environment as well as user behavior in interaction due to lack of
monitoring tool for VR applications.
The targets of this paper are: a) build up an interactive VR scene based
on Unity 3D engine and HTC Vive device, b) design a real-time monitoring
SDK tool for VR application, and simultaneously collects data in terms
of hardware configuration, performance, crash and user behavior, c)
design a data analysis center for processing data from monitoring SDK as
well as generating monitoring report with graphs. At the end, a VR scene
will be selected to verify the effectiveness of the SDK tool via
carrying out real test.