Immersiveness and symmetry in copresent scenarios

Abstract

Collaboration at a distance has long been a research goal of distributed virtual environments. A number of recent technologies, including immersive projection technology systems (IPTs) and head-mounted displays (HMDs), promise a new generation of technologies that are more intuitive to use than desktop-based systems.This paper presents an experiment that compares collaboration in five different settings. Pairs collaborated on the same puzzle-solving task using one of: an IPT connected to another IPT, an IPT connected to an HMD, an IPT connected to a desktop system, two connected desktop systems, or face-to-face collaboration with real objects.The findings demonstrate the benefits of using immersive technologies, and show the advantages of using symmetrical settings for better performance. Some usability problems of the different distributed settings are addressed, as well as factors such as "presence" and "copresence" and how these contribute to the participants' overall experiences.

Are two heads better than one?

“…Further results demonstrated the benefits of using immersive technologies, and showed the advantages of using symmetrical settings for better performance (see Figure 2). During earlier studies [30] we observed that some concrete factors, like presence and performance could be quantitatively approached in the environments, but to understand collaboration the quantitative evaluations were not enough [9]. In a later study adding qualitative evaluations showed more benefits, e.g.…”

“…Details on networked experiments can be founded in Heldal et al [9] For the collaborative settings, see Table 1. For face-to-face collaboration with real objects, see Figure 1.…”

“…The same Rubik-type, puzzlesolving task was solved in the whole experiment for all settings The data was contrasted with data collected from 220 individuals collaborating in pairs presented previously [9].…”

On multiuser perspectives in passive stereographic virtual environments

“…Some of these approaches use a common fixed PoV or are based on deformation of the projection . In case of shared space among different users, it is possible to adopt a technique that privileges a specific user, for example, according to his or her role in an interactive task . The selection of a specific technique depends on the application, and it is important to evaluate the techniques in terms of performance and consistency among the users' views .…”

Lessons Learned in Developing a Second Life Educational Environment

“…Besides traditional gaming and entertainment applications, some serious propositions are starting to emerge for their use both in education (ReLive, 2008;de Freitas, 2008;Otto et al, 2006;Heldal et al, 2005;Daily et al, 2000) and in the corporate world (Bartholomew, 2008;IBM, 2010;Nguyen et al, 2008), particularly to foster remote collaboration within increasingly globally distributed institutions and industries. Industry forecasts (Driver and Driver, 2009) predict that within the next decade an immersive layer will be added to current web technology, providing a high-degree of integration between immersive technology and the web, and making virtual worlds a mainstream technology for business and education.…”