DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.24678.1 ISSN: 2732-5121

Remote immersive virtual reality studies: A systematic review of methods, practices and applications

Lui Albæk Thomsen, Nora Glage, Rico Krueger
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Background Immersive virtual reality (IVR) enables controlled experimentation, but laboratory-based studies can be constrained by equipment, infrastructure, participant access, and the need for experimenter co-presence. Remote IVR, in which participants use participant-owned or researcher-provisioned head-mounted displays without an experimenter physically co-located during the study session, provides an alternative approach whose methods and reporting practices remain inconsistently described. Methods We systematically reviewed primary empirical reports of remote IVR research published in English between 1 January 2015 and 30 June 2026. ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched, supplemented by forward citation chasing from two seed publications. Reports focused primarily on rehabilitation or clinical intervention delivery, education or training, teleoperation, or collaboration were excluded. Two reviewers independently screened records and reports. We conducted a descriptive methodological synthesis; no meta-analysis or formal risk-of-bias, reporting-bias, or certainty-of-evidence assessment was undertaken. Results Sixty-one publications were included. Sample sizes ranged from 4 to 282 participants (mean = 59.2). Gender information was available for 53 publications, with an unweighted mean male share of 66.2% across reported sample- or experiment-level values. Mean age was reported in 41 publications (unweighted mean = 28.3 years). Recruitment most often involved social media or online communities (54.1%). Participant-owned HMDs accounted for 65.6% of studies, and native applications were used in 73.8%. Most studies were unsupervised (67.2%) and asynchronous (65.6%). At least one ethical safeguard beyond informed consent was coded in 28 publications (45.9%). Conclusions Remote IVR has been used across a range of experimental paradigms and deployment models. Reporting varied across recruitment, sample characteristics, technical implementation, procedures, measures, and ethical safeguards. More consistent reporting would facilitate comparison and replication across remote IVR studies.

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