Visual deictic reference in a collaborative virtual environment

Abstract

This paper evaluates the use of Visual Deictic Reference (VDR) in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs). A simple CVE capable of hosting two (or more) participants simultaneously immersed in the same virtual environment is used as the testbed. One participant's VDR, obtained by tracking the participant's gaze, is projected to co-participants' environments in real-time as a colored lightspot. We compare the VDR lightspot when it is eye-slaved to when it is head-slaved and show that an eye-slaved VDR helps disambiguate the deictic point of reference, especially during conditions when the user's line of sight is decoupled from their head direction.