COLLABORATIVE VR - A NEW ERA OF DESIGN

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005

– One of the key challenges in the rapid technological advance of Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) concerns the design of collaborative experiences. VR systems do not readily support team collaboration because they tend to focus on individual experiences and do not easily facilitate naturalistic collaboration. MR environments provide solutions for collaborative experiences, but establishing smooth communication between hardware components and software modules faces a major hurdle. This paper presents the background to and main challenges of an ongoing project on collaboration in an MR lab, aiming to design a serious 'team collaboration' game. To this end, we utilized a common game engine to engineer a cost-effective solution that would make the game playable in a configuration operated by WorldViz and Volfoni equipment. Evaluation of various solutions in the development process found a Unity 3D Cluster Rendering Beta solution to be the most cost-effective and successful.

The paper presents an initial framework for studying issues in the design and evaluation of Collaborative Virtual Environments based on immersive projection technology systems. The framework consists of a software platform, developed using Virtools® software suite, which supports collaborative work among collaborators in different immersive systems (CAVE®- like environment, Workbench, etc.), and usability inspection of each iteration of the platform. The objective of this setting for the framework was to gain insights on both technological aspects regarding the development of such a platform and human factors issues on collaborative work within Virtual Environments; and more importantly on the interrelation between technological and human factors aspects for building usable Collaborative Virtual Environments. A live demonstration of the platform connecting two CAVE®-like environments situated in geographically distant places was organized to collect feedback from participants. The demonstration provided the users with different interaction metaphors addressing the three main characteristics of collaborative work through Virtual Environments: awareness of others, context sharing, and negotiation and communication. Details about the platform, results of an informal observational study though the live demonstration and lessons learned from conducting such a framework are presented in the paper.

Computer Applications in Production and Engineering, 1997

Networked Collaborative Virtual Environments (NCVE) are systems that allow several geographically distant users to collaborate within the common 3D virtual environment The users become part of the environment represented by graphical embodiments and they can interact with the environment and with each other. We analyze the importance of good graphical representation of each user for communication and collaboration. The Virtual Life Network (VLNET) system is an NCVE using sophisticated Virtual Humans as user embodiments to improve collaboration. We describe the system and some experimental applications.

Research Square (Research Square), 2023

The application of Virtual Reality Environments (VRE) has been gaining momentum as a relatively new tool to assist with mitigating various difficulties including abstractness of concepts, lack of user engagement, perception of disconnection from other users. A VRE may offer both synchronous and asynchronous experiences, in addition to an immersive environment which promotes users' engagement. Past research has shown that, in general, VRE do improve the experiences they try to enhance in many aspects of human activity. Terms like immersiveness and 3D representation of real life objects and environments are, as it appears, the two most obvious positive effects of Virtual Reality (VR) applications. However, despite these benefits it does not come without challenges. The main three concepts/challenges are the spatial design, the collaboration interaction between its members and the VRE, and the audio and video fidelity. Each of the three includes a number of other components that should be addressed for the total experience to be fine-tuned. These include mutual embodiment and shared perspectives, teleportation, gestural interaction, symmetric and asymmetric collaboration, physical and virtual co-location, inventory, and time and spatial synchronization. This paper comprises a survey of the literature, that identifies and explains the features introduced and the challenges involved with the VREs, and furthermore provides various interesting future research directions.

2004

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are distributed virtual reality systems that allow multiple geographically distant users to communicate with each other and interact with virtual objects in a shared virtual world. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the development and use of CVEs. The design analysis of CVE systems reveals several critical technical issues: managing consistent distributed information, controlling access to objects by multiple users, supporting large number of users, handling new users joining an existing shared environment, and representing users to each other in the environment appropriately. As a result, various CVE systems have been developed to address these issues. Most existing systems are either focused on specific collaboration features or customized to particular range of target applications, which constrains the flexibility of the system architecture to support a wider range of applications and limits its extensibility to respond to new requirements. This document presents a design framework that addresses all of these major issues associated with CVE design and implementation, and a flexible open prototype implementation of this framework that explicitly exposes each of them, making evaluation of the effects of specific issues on overall system performance possible. A systematic approach to evaluation of whole system is proposed and applied through a focus on internal system characterization and a focus on the external effects of specific issues on system performance. The experimental results showed that the prototype system provides efficient performance for collaborative applications with respect to the requirements considered in the experiments. The evaluation of our prototype implementation shows that our approach is feasible, and can be applied for the evaluation of other instances of issues.

Proceedings of the third international conference on Collaborative virtual environments - CVE '00, 2000

We look at differences between the experience of virtual environments and physical reality, and consider making the technical limitations which cause these differences 'visible', aiming to provide resources to enhance communication between users. Three causes of such discrepancies are considered to illustrate this idea: field-ofview; haptic feedback; and network delays. For each, we examine ways of revealing the limitations of the virtual world as resources to better understand the intricacies of system and co-user behaviour. These examples introduce a broader discussion of design issues involved in producing interfaces for day-to-day collaboration through virtual environments. Issues include: the application and activity undertaken through the virtual world; the ability to focus on the business at hand rather than the system in use; and extent of users' familiarity with application and system.

Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Virtual Reality (VR) is currently popular technology that has been used by people in various areas such as architecture, medical, training and many more. In this paper, the researcher proposed collaborative VR for interior design that allows customer and designer work together at different location. Commonly, the designer draw their design in two-dimensional (2D) graphics at the drawing paper and presents to the customer. However, 2D drawings led to an ambiguity, indistrinct and uncertainty on the design. In addition, redesign any changes lead to re-build the prototype. These will be costly and wasting time, therefore, researcher proposed collaborative VR application which provide an intense feelings about the design which is presented in form of three-dimensional (3D) graphics. Additionally, proposed application would allow the designer and customer to work in real-time. In conclusion, collaborative VR will give the benefits for interior design manufacturing to prosper along...

2020 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2020

Writing or sketching on whiteboards is an essential part of collaborative discussions in business meetings, reading groups, design sessions, and interviews. However, prior work in collaborative virtual reality (VR) systems has rarely explored the design space of multi-user layouts and interaction modes with virtual whiteboards. In this paper, we present CollaboVR, a reconfigurable framework for both co-located and geographically dispersed multi-user communication in VR. Our system unleashes users’ creativity by sharing freehand drawings, converting 2D sketches into 3D models, and generating procedural animations in real-time. To minimize the computational expense for VR clients, we leverage a cloud architecture in which the computational expensive application (Chalktalk) is hosted directly on the servers, with results being simultaneously streamed to clients. We have explored three custom layouts – integrated, mirrored, and projective – to reduce visual clutter, increase eye contact...

2018

The Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment (CVRE) facilitates distributed cooperated activities. CVRE provides the graphically digital environment for multiple user interface to interact with each other. Mostly virtual reality systems are developed for the individuals. Therefore, CVRE faces the technical and systematic challenges. In this paper we discuss the existing challenges of CVRE. First part highlights the nature of the virtual reality, collaboration and virtual reality activities, in contrast of the challenges of CVRE. Following this, we discuss the future research directions.

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1999

COVEN (COllaborative Virtual ENvironments) is a European project that seeks to develop a comprehensive approach to the issues in the development of Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) technology; COVEN brings together twelve academic and industrial partners with a wide range of expertise in CSCW, networked VR, computer graphics, human factors, HCI and telecommunications infrastructures. After two years of work, we are presenting the main features of our approach and results: our driving applications, the main components of our technical investigations, and our experimental activities. With different citizen and professional application scenarios as driving forces, COVEN is exploring the requirements and supporting techniques for collaborative interaction in scalable CVEs. Technical results are being integrated in an enriched networked VR platform based on the dVS and DIVE systems. Taking advantage of a dedicated Europe-wide ISDN and ATM network infrastructure, a large component of the project is a trial and experimentation activity that should allow to build up a comprehensive understanding of the technical network requirements of such systems along with their usability issues and human factors aspects. More information may be found at http://chinon.thomson-csf.fr/projects/coven/.

This paper reports on the development of a new VR (Virtual Reality) system with the world's largest hemispherical screen, which can display high immersive, life-size scale, stereoscopic images. A cluster of PCs is used in master-slave architecture, with 18 slave PCs for rendering left eye and right eye images, and the master for synchronizing the images for stereo view. Contents can be shared with a VR system operating on a notebook with a new VR system developed as part of the same VR toolkit. We apply the system to a real, collaborative architectural design project.