Despite various collaborative software that supports expressing ideas, people still largely prefer physical notebooks or whiteboards. The reason is that they provide free-form expressions, co-presence of all participants and easy collaboration. However, when working with remote participants, people often choose the convenience of video conferencing, perhaps with screen sharing. We propose CollaboVR, an open-source reconfigurable framework for distributed and co-located multi-user communication in Virtual Reality. We tested CollaboVR with an application that lets participants create freehand drawings and 3D objects, while allowing participants to adjust two key variables: (1) User arrangement (participants adjust the location of their views of other participants) and (2) Input orientation (participants adjust the input to be vertical or horizontal). Preliminary user studies show that CollaboVR is a useful collaborative tool . Users report that some user arrangements and input orientations work best for brainstorming, while others work best for presentation or collaborative refinement of designs .
Mixed Reality (MR) enables users to explore a wonderland which is not realizable in the physical world. This provides users with the chance to communicate in many different ways. We present our MR multi-user workstation system to investigate how different configurations of participants and content affect communication between people in the same immersive environment. We implemented mirrored face-to-face communication, side-by-side communication and eyes-free communication by using the presentation tool Chalktalk as the content creation server and designing a multi-user MR environment. We have conducted a preliminary user study for our mirrored face-to-face configuration, evaluating with respect to one-to-one interaction, focus shift and eye-contact. We provide experimental results and interview responses .
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Despite various collaborative software that supports expressing ideas, people still largely prefer physical notebooks or whiteboards. The reason is that they provide free-form expressions, co-presence of all participants and easy collaboration. However, when working with remote participants, people often choose the convenience of video conferencing, perhaps with screen sharing. We propose CollaboVR, an open-source reconfigurable framework for distributed and co-located
Mixed Reality (MR) enables users to explore a wonderland which is not realizable in the physical world. This provides users with the chance to communicate in many different ways. We present our MR
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communication in Virtual Reality. We tested CollaboVR with an application that lets participants create freehand drawings and 3D objects, while allowing participants to adjust two key variables: (1) User arrangement (participants adjust the location of their views of other participants) and (2) Input orientation (participants adjust the input to be vertical or horizontal). Preliminary user studies show that CollaboVR is a useful collaborative tool . Users report that some user arrangements and input orientations work best for brainstorming, while others work best for presentation or collaborative refinement of designs
workstation system to investigate how different configurations of participants and content affect communication between people in the same immersive environment. We implemented mirrored face-to-face communication, side-by-side communication and eyes-free communication by using the presentation tool Chalktalk as the content creation server and designing a multi-user MR environment. We have conducted a preliminary user study for our mirrored face-to-face configuration, evaluating with respect to one-to-one interaction, focus shift and eye-contact. We provide experimental results and interview responses