The research topic I chose to cover was Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Due to personal interest in wanted to know more about it, I wanted to analyze the positives and negatives of Virtual Reality. I analyzed some articles about case studies conducted to research positives and negatives, with the first paper talking about how VR would affect children when introduced in different levels of virtual learning

This compared students of various ages within non-immersive VR (online learning on a computer), semi- immersive VR (an AR classroom) and full-immersive VR (virtual environment with a headset). It was found that of these setups, full immersive VR was the most effective in teaching students subjects in STEM such as mathematics and sciences. This interested me greatly, as from my understanding, virtual learning through a computer didn't work very well with students, but those that were placed in full immersive treated the class as if they were there physically. It makes me wonder if our brains subconsciously treat virtual spaces as physical spaces, forcing us to adopt the same mannerisms as if we were actually physically there. 

I wanted to research more about this particular upside to VR, and found a second article about treating claustrophobia using VR. A test was conducted to see if anxiety/discomfort could be invoked from a VR headset using a virtual space, with participants placed in a virtual room and told to just sit and wait. The virtual room would progressively get more perilous as time went on, with lights flickering to alarms going off until finally the entire room was engulfed in flames. The test results showed that VR can actually invoke these negative feelings of discomfort, which suggested that researchers could create positive feelings of comfort with VR in order to deal with things such as claustrophobia. This paper in particular was so interesting to me in fact, that I felt like I wanted to make a game where the player attempts to invoke such feelings in individuals in VR.

My last article was checking to see if VR has a negative impact on a user's vision, tested by placing subjects in different environments. These environments would mirror one another, with 2 environments taking place outside and 2 indoors. The same environment would be virtual or physical, with the order at which participants enter the environments being random between participants. The test concluded saying that there was no change to the test subject's eyesight, but there was a change in the eye that suggested that VR didn't target your eye's from close-up as previously thought since the lens of the headset is so close to your eye. This would lead back to the human mind subconsciously believing it is looking at a physical thing and adjusting its eyesight accordingly.