The effects of sharing viewpoints on task performance in collaborative VR applications
Date
2023-02-10
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Abstract
While virtual reality applications allow for face-to-face collaboration and the ability to see each other’s avatars, having different graphical viewpoints can hinder task performance due to the confusion caused by left-right ambiguities and text orientation. In this thesis, we investigate the effect of altering collaborators’ viewpoints and sharing one collaborator’s viewpoint with the other without moving the avatars’ positions in a collaboration between two people in Virtual Reality. We created a Virtual Reality application and twelve scenarios to understand this approach’s effect. Two terms were defined: Shared Viewpoint, which is when users’ graphical viewpoints are decoupled from their avatars and put next to each other, and Independent Viewpoint, in which users’ graphical viewpoints are where their avatars are located. A user study is conducted to gather qualitative and quantitative data. We calculated task completion time and users’ preferences when they have a shared graphical viewpoint from the virtual world and object. Our findings showed that users prefer a shared viewpoint rather than independent viewpoints. Additionally, we discovered that having a shared viewpoint can either increase or decrease task completion time, depending on the relative positions of avatars around the table.
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Keywords
VR, Collaboration in VR, Shared viewpoint
Citation
Aminbeidokhti, A. (2023). The effects of sharing viewpoints on task performance in collaborative VR applications (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.