Conveying perspective in multi-user virtual reality collaborations

Effectively conveying the users' visual point of view in a collaborative virtual reality environment is a crucial factor in successful and efficient cooperation. Visual indicators of users' perspectives can reduce the required verbal communication and therefore increase the efficiency of work within remote teams. In this paper we compare three distinct types of visual indicators regarding task completion time, precision and error rate. These perspective conveying methods include a 3D cone indicating the boundaries of a user's field of view, highlighting the object a user is looking at, and displaying a direct video mirror of the user's view port. In an experiment these methods were used to transmit information from one person to another, that would otherwise be inaccessible. In a virtual warehouse scenario, participants moved visually obstructed boxes to a target area with a crane, while an experiment conductor provided visual cues as to where these boxes are, solely by looking at them. The results indicate that object highlighting is significantly inferior regarding precision and error rate, while the video mirror proved to be the most reliable. The view cone was however perceived as the method with the highest degree of social presence.