Simplifying co-located collaboration in screen-based virtual environments

García Estrada, José Fernando

Abstract

Co-located virtual environments (VEs) are shared physical spaces where several participants collaborate in a virtual world as they would do in a real-world group meeting using a shared display and visualization. However, implementation of co-located VEs with equal interaction by all participants is complex and expensive. The main issue is the difficulty in providing perspective-correct images for each individual when several participants are co-located. This limits the ability of participants to interact directly with objects in the VE. Implementing a form of interaction that accepts this limitation remains a significant challenge. Research approaches have made trade-offs striving to eliminate or mitigate the restriction on providing perspective-correct images to enable co-located work. However, some of those approaches may compromise the benefits of individual perception in a VE against a common averaged perspective or adopt complex, high cost solutions.

This thesis investigates user interaction for collaborative work in a screen-based co-located VE. The work presented in this thesis aims to make interaction in co-located VEs simpler than existing hardware and software-based approaches by applying an under-investigated approach where one user has a perspective-correct view (active) whilst other users receive images that are not perspective-correct (passive).

Collaboration was investigated through a controlled co-located work study, adopting two-user interaction using the active-passive approach. The findings of the study indicate that the configuration of the object geometry may be an important factor using the active-passive approach. This result extends existing approaches that focus on the relation between active and passive users’ locations. The investigation was facilitated by an innovative method where the behaviour of a subject during a coordinated task is automatised using a virtual participant.

The findings also show limitations of the active-passive approach that can be optimized to enable co-located work.

The conclusions of this thesis provide quantitative and qualitative data on how two-user interaction performance varies during coordinated interaction using an active-passive approach. The results presented in this thesis provide an improved understanding of two-user collaboration in virtual environments and should be useful for the design and development of co-located VE systems.

Citation

García Estrada, J. F. (2015). Simplifying co-located collaboration in screen-based virtual environments. (Thesis). University of Hull. Retrieved from https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4217338

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Dec 14, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 23, 2023
• Keywords: Computer science
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4217338
• Additional Information: Department of Computer Science, The University of Hull
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2015