Effects of avatar and background representation forms to co-presence in mixed reality (MR) tele-conference systems

With continued technology innovation, the traditional 2D video based tele-conferencing and collaborative systems are evolving into ones that are immersive, 3D, more interactive and even augmented in real environment. One important quality of a tele-collaboration system is the sense of co-presence as felt by the participating users. Virtual and augmented reality based implementations and media presentation will have different ramification toward the sense of co-presence and effectiveness of the communication. In this paper, we propose to carry out a preliminary study comparing various mixed reality based 3D collaborative media in two dimensions: (1) the form of the background (real vs. virtual) and (2) the form of user (photo-realistically reconstructed vs. pre-built 3D avatar). The traditional video based system is also compared as a reference for which both the background and user is represented in real but in 2D flat screen. We present the experimental design and report the results.