Collaborative environment for shared virtual reality

Despite the cost reduction and the large availability of models on the market, the widespread diffusion of Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) in the consumer market is still far away. Thus, it often happens that Virtual Reality (VR) is a single-user experience that excludes bystanders. In contrast, cellphones and tablets are omnipresent, which makes them the perfect candidates to share the HMDs experiences. We are proposing a CVE (Collaborative Virtual Environment) solution, where the users without an HMD could interact with the ones who have it using their HHDs (HandHeld Devices) . We addressed the problem of creating an asymmetric collaborative solution by taking into account all the novels challenges associated with users that share different hardware. To this end, we designed a shared application that enables to make 3D manipulations, while satisfying all the requirements needed to avoid the decrease of awareness due to the different views. We conducted a user study and used the data collected to demonstrate that the application makes possible collaborations between HMDs and non-HMD users, giving our contributions alongside other research in the field.