Virtual Reality Conferencing

摘要

The development and availability of immersive VR devices has risen significantly in recent years. Combined with the latest milestones in computer graphics and the current motion tracking devices a certain feeling of presence inside the virtual world can be achieved which is aiming (or wishing) to be indistinguishable from the real world in the long term. Although this aspiration may be visionary at the present day, the possibilities of collaborative human interactions within a virtual reality system are already manifold. In this work we focus on the development and evaluation of a virtual reality conferencing application prototype supporting personalized user-based avatars for up to four persons joining remotely in a virtual conference room. The prototype has been evaluated in terms of the feeling of presence experienced inside the applications virtual environment when wearing a virtual reality headset and when using the application in desktop mode, respectively. The results of the conducted experiments indicate a positive impact on the feeling of presence by users wearing virtual reality headsets as compared to the group without headsets.