Multi-user Multi-platform xR Collaboration: System and Evaluation

Abstract

Virtual technologies (AR/VR/MR, subsumed as xR) are used in many commercial applications, such as automotive development, medical training, architectural planning, teaching and many more. Usually, existing software products offer either VR, AR or a 2D monitor experience. This limitation can be a hindrance. Let’s draw a simple application example: Users at a university shall join an xR teaching session in a mechanical engineering lecture. They bring their own xR device, join the session and experience the lecture with xR support. But users may ask themselves: Does the choice of my own xR device limit my learning success? In order to investigate multi-platform xR experiences, a software framework was developed and is presented here. This allows one shared xR experience for users of AR smartphones, AR/MR glasses and VR-PCs. The aim is to use this framework to study differences between the platforms and to be able to research for better quality multi-user multi-platform xR experiences. We present results of a first study that made use of our framework. We compared user experience, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use between three different xR device types in a multi-user experience. Results are presented and discussed.