Collaborators awareness for user cohabitation in co-located collaborative virtual environments

Abstract

In a co-located collaborative virtual environment, multiple users share the same physical tracked space and the same virtual workspace. When the virtual workspace is larger than the real workspace, navigation interaction techniques must be deployed to let the users explore the entire virtual environment. When a user navigates in the virtual space while remaining static in the real space, his/her position in the physical workspace and in the virtual workspace are no longer the same. Thus, in the context where each user is immersed in the virtual environment with a Head-Mounted-Display, a user can still perceive where his/her collaborators are in the virtual environment but not where they are in real world. In this paper, we propose and compare three methods to warn users about the position of collaborators in the shared physical workspace to ensure a proper cohabitation and safety of the collaborators. The first one is based on a virtual grid shaped as a cylinder, the second one is based on a ghost representation of the user and the last one displays the physical safe-navigation space on the floor of the virtual environment. We conducted a user-study with two users wearing a Head-Mounted-Display in the context of a collaborative FirstPerson-Shooter game. Our three methods were compared with a condition where the physical tracked space was separated into two zones, one per user, to evaluate the impact of each condition on safety, displacement freedom and global satisfaction of users. Results suggest that the ghost avatar and the cylinder grid can be good alternatives to the separation of the tracked space. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Virtual reality; Collaborative interaction; User studies; KEYWORDSVirtual Reality, Collaborative Virtual Environment Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). VRST '17, November 8-10, 2017, Gothenburg, Sweden [Fleury et al. 2010] that results from the virtual navigation of both users in the VE. When these two users wear a HMD, they can still perceive each other in the VE but no longer in the real workspace. In that case, we must avoid any possible physical collision between the two users.

Development of a Virtual Three‐Dimensional Assessment Scenario for Anatomical Education

“…Third, it can stimulate deep learning, since assessment methods are able to influence and drive the learning approach students take (Newble and Gordon, 1985; Reid et al, 2007). Fourth, it creates a so‐called collaborative virtual environment (Lacoche et al, 2017). Stereoscopic 3D AR environment in particular, allows interaction between teacher and student who share and manipulate the same virtual object, while maintaining contact with their real environment.…”

Asymmetric Interface: User Interface of Asymmetric Virtual Reality for New Presence and Experience

“…Subsequently, studies have been continuously conducted with the objective of providing an immersive environment for distributed collaboration [38]. Furthermore, various application studies have been conducted: A study on the comparative analysis of remote tasks, which can be effectively collaborated by multiple users while displaying creativity when designing a building in a virtual environment [39]; a study on the analysis of awareness process in a group task of multiple users existing at the same location [21]; a study proposing a technology and method for collaborative learning in VR [40]; and a study on the evaluation of user experiences for human representation in a virtual collaboration environment [41].…”

“…With respect to a virtual collaboration environment, interaction methods and technology are proposed, whereby many users existing in a virtual environment can collaborate through communication in a given condition and environment [19][20][21][22]. For the virtual collaboration environments of immersive VRs, systems are designed to create immersive environments where multiple users wearing HMDs can experience immersion together.…”

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“…Research has been performed on this topic, ranging from studies on distributed interactive virtual environments (DIVEs) to studies on applied technologies for multiple remote users [23,24]. A variety of studies are being conducted to improve the sense of presence for multiple users that share a common experience in a virtual environment: on analyzing how multiple users perceive and recognize each other's behavior when they are experiencing VR in the same space [25], on methods for effectively processing realistic walking motion in a situation where multiple VR users are sharing a common experience [26], on communication technologies for improving collaboration in a remote mixed reality [27], and on enabling users to effectively control communication in a CVE through gestures [28]. These have occasionally been developed as studies on asymmetrical VRs that encompass Non-HMD wearers among a collaborative environment of HMD wearers [12,29].…”