EAST: Environment-Aware Stylized Transition Along the Reality-Virtuality Continuum

2025-11-26

AI Summary

In VR gaming, real-world intrusions disrupt immersion—particularly during transitions along the Real-Virtual Continuum (RVC)—as existing approaches rely on digital twins or simplistic visual blending, failing to bridge the aesthetic gap between physical and virtual environments and thus limiting highly stylized VR experiences. This paper proposes an environment-aware stylized transition framework: it pioneers the integration of neural style transfer into 3D Gaussian Splatting to achieve game-appropriate, semantically consistent reconstruction of real-scene elements within virtual environments; and employs real-time scene understanding to dynamically generate aesthetically coherent transitional renderings. User studies and quantitative experiments demonstrate that our method significantly improves cognitive comfort and emotional continuity, while maintaining superior visual consistency across diverse artistic-style VR scenes.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Computer Vision: 3D Computer Vision
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Vertical and domain-specific search
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

In the Virtual Reality (VR) gaming industry, maintaining immersion during real-world interruptions remains a challenge, particularly during transitions along the reality-virtuality continuum (RVC). Existing methods tend to rely on digital replicas or simple visual transitions, neglecting to address the aesthetic discontinuities between real and virtual environments, especially in highly stylized VR games. This paper introduces the Environment-Aware Stylized Transition (EAST) framework, which employs a novel style-transferred 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) technique to transfer real-world interruptions into the virtual environment with seamless aesthetic consistency. Rather than merely transforming the real world into game-like visuals, EAST minimizes the disruptive impact of interruptions by integrating real-world elements within the framework. Qualitative user studies demonstrate significant enhancements in cognitive comfort and emotional continuity during transitions, while quantitative experiments highlight EAST's ability to maintain visual coherence across diverse VR styles.

Problem

• Maintains immersion during real-world interruptions in VR gaming.
• Addresses aesthetic discontinuities between real and virtual environments.
• Minimizes disruptive impact by integrating real-world elements seamlessly.

Innovation

• Style-transferred 3D Gaussian Splatting for aesthetic consistency
• Integrates real-world elements into virtual environment seamlessly
• Maintains visual coherence across diverse VR game styles