ImPres: An Immersive 3D Presentation Framework for Mixed Reality Enhanced Learning

Abstract

The understanding of three-dimensional structures is an important learning goal, e.g. in anatomy courses or archeology. However, existing 2D slide-based presentation formats are not up to this visualization task as they cannot convey depth and spatial structure well enough. Moreover, a projected slide in a lecture room can be hard to see, depending on the viewer’s position and distance from the projection. Mixed reality technology offers an innovative solution for teaching 3D structures with immersive presentations. In this paper, we present the immersive 3D presentation application ImPres. It combines traditional 2D slides with 3D augmented content. With ImPres, students can use their smartphones or tablets to view 3D objects in an augmented reality mode during the presentation. By synchronizing the 3D scene to the currently shown slide by the lecturer, students receive a 3D handout that can be placed individually in each student’s environment. Lecturers are able to use the Microsoft HoloLens as a 3D editor to precisely set up the presentation. In combination with a 2D editor for the slide design, existing lecture slides can be imported, reused and augmented for mixed reality. This way, presentations can be held in any use case where 3D content is important for the curriculum. The resulting implementation of ImPres is available as an open-source project and is applicable both in co-located lectures, as well as remote webinars.