UCF-led virtual experience research accelerator achieves initial milestones for XR science
An international research consortium led by the University of Central Florida (UCF) has announced two key milestones for its Virtual Experience Research Accelerator (VERA) platform, aiming to accelerate and expand global extended reality research.
Supported by collaborative grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), VERA is the first large-scale system dedicated to human-subjects research in virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR). The platform has entered open beta, launched its first large-scale remote study, and issued its first operational-use grant.
Traditionally, behavioral studies in immersive environments required participants to visit specialized laboratories. This approach caused bottlenecks, increased costs, limited sample sizes, and extended research timelines.
To address these limitations, VERA integrates artificial intelligence, web portals, and specialized software plugins. This unified system allows researchers to design, deploy, and monitor complex experiments with remote participants using their own commercial headsets from home.
Accelerating cybersickness science
For its first full-scale study, the platform is addressing cybersickness—one of the most persistent barriers preventing broader adoption of virtual reality across education, healthcare, and commercial industries. Led by Gerd Bruder, an associate professor at UCF, the remote initiative seeks to identify individual susceptibility factors to nausea and dizziness caused by visual-motion mismatches inside headsets. Resolving these comfort challenges is considered critical to enhancing general VR accessibility.
Early data collection demonstrated the remote framework's capabilities. In 15 days, VERA tracked over 250 participants through a 30-minute experimental protocol. In contrast, the in-laboratory version was limited to 30 local participants due to time constraints.
During the standardized remote sessions, participants experience a controlled VR rollercoaster environment while VERA automatically logs sickness ratings every 30 seconds, visual acuity checks, pre- and post-exposure questionnaires, and continuous head-tracking coordinates. The project is maintaining active enrollment with an ultimate target of 2,000 subjects.
Expanding immersive learning research
In addition to the cybersickness study, VERA has awarded its first Use Grant to a collaborative project between San José State University and New Media Learning. Led by Professor Anthony S. Chow, the study will develop a Unity-based immersive testbed for information behavior research.
The framework uses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a foundation to analyze how various immersive configurations impact public education and information engagement.
The project functions as a scalable prototype to make advanced immersive learning environments more accessible to communities worldwide. Using VERA's cloud infrastructure, the research team will gather a range of behavioral metrics, including objective attention patterns, object interactions, spatial navigation pathways, click counts, overall engagement indicators, and time-on-task metrics.
Qualitative user feedback will supplement this data. A key feature of the grant is the direct involvement of undergraduate and graduate information science students, offering hands-on training for future technology roles.
Expanding Distributed Research Protocols Across Global Frontiers
Gregory Welch, the lead principal investigator for the VERA project at UCF, emphasized that the current milestones are merely the beginning of the platform's long-term roadmap. Because the platform reduces development friction from the ground up, it establishes reliable behavioral data baselines that can be verified across multiple institutions.
The framework is designed to support disciplines beyond computer science. Future research will expand into workforce training, medical simulations, digital literacy, public health communication, and AI-assisted adaptive learning. Through standardized policies and open-beta access, the consortium aims to build a sustainable global community for extended reality researchers.
