Paper Presentation at ACM VRST 2023

As part of the METAREAL project, the paper titled "UniteXR: Collaborative Exploration of Real-World and Digital Museum Spaces" was presented at the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST) in 2023 by authors Ephraim Schott, ElHassan Makled, Tony Jan Zoeppig, Sebastian Mühlhaus, Florian Weidner, Wolfgang Broll, and Bernd Froehlich. The paper explores the use of smartphone Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) for collaborative exploration of physical spaces and their digital counterparts. It assesses two spatial awareness visualization methods for pairs of users, comprising a smartphone AR user and a head-mounted VR user. These methods, involving a mini-map-based approach and an egocentric compass needle and path visualization, effectively assist on-site users in locating and following their virtual companions. The paper also introduces an inverse kinematics (IK) avatar for the smartphone user, allowing for natural gesture-based communication. An expert review conducted in a museum and its digital twin demonstrates a strong sense of social presence for both VR and on-site smartphone AR users, affirming successful communication and collaboration between on-site and remote visitors.

Get the paper here.