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Collaborative virtual environments provide the ability for collocated and remote participants to communicate and share information with each other. For example, immersive technologies can be used to facilitate collaborative guidance during navigation of an unfamiliar environment. However, the design space of 3D user interfaces for supporting collaborative guidance tasks, along with the advantages and disadvantages of different immersive communication modalities to support these tasks, are not well understood. In this paper, we investigate three different methods for providing assistance (visual-only, audio-only, and combined audio/visual cues) using an asymmetric collaborative guidance task. We developed a novel experimental design and virtual reality scenario to evaluate task performance during navigation of a complex and dynamic environment while simultaneously avoiding observation by patrolling sentries. Two experiments were conducted: a dyadic study conducted at a large public event and a controlled lab study using a confederate. Combined audio/visual guidance cues were rated easier to use and more effectively facilitated the avoidance of sentries compared with the audio-only condition. The presented work has the potential to inform the design of future experiments and applications that involve communication modalities to support collaborative guidance tasks with immersive technologies., ICAT-EGVE 2020 - International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, Navigation in Virtual Environments, 121, 130, Fei Wu, Jerald Thomas, Shreyas Chinnola, and Evan Suma Rosenberg, CCS Concepts: Human-centered computing --> Virtual reality; Collaborative interaction

Redirected walking allows the exploration of large virtual environments within a limited physical space. To achieve this, redirected walking algorithms must maximize the rotation gains applied while remaining imperceptible to the user. Previous research has established population averages for redirection thresholds, including rotation gains. However, these averages do not account for individual variation in tolerance of and susceptibility to redirection. This paper investigates methodologies designed to quickly and accurately calculate rotation gain thresholds for an individual user. This new method is straightforward to implement, requires a minimal amount of space, and takes only a few minutes to estimate a user's personal threshold for rotation gains. Results from a user study support the wide variability in detection thresholds and indicate that the method of parameter estimation through sequential testing (PEST) is viable for efficiently calibrating individual thresholds., ICAT-EGVE 2018 - International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments, Avatars and Movement, 61, 64, Courtney Hutton, Shelby Ziccardi, Julio Medina, and Evan Suma Rosenberg, CCS Concepts: Human-centered computing --> Virtual reality; User studies; Computing methodologies --> Perception

The proliferation of head-mounted displays (HMD) in the market means that cinematic virtual reality (CVR) is an increasingly popular format. We explore several metrics that may indicate advantages and disadvantages of CVR compared to traditional viewing formats such as TV. We explored the consumption of panoramic videos in three different display systems: a HMD, a SurroundVideo+ (SV+), and a standard 16:9 TV. The SV+ display features a TV with pro-jected peripheral content. A between-groups experiment of 63 participants was conducted, in which participants watched panoramic videos in one of these three display conditions. Aspects examined in the experiment were spatial awareness, narrative engagement, enjoyment, memory, fear, attention, and a viewer’s concern about missing something. Our results indicated that the HMD offered a significant benefit in terms of enjoyment and spatial awareness, and our SV+ display offered a significant improvement in enjoyment over traditional TV. We were unable to confirm the work of a previous study that showed incidental memory may be lower in a HMD over a TV. Drawing attention and a viewer’s concern about missing something were also not significantly different between display conditions. It is clear that passive media viewing consists of a complex interplay of factors, such as the media itself, the characteristics of the display, as well as human aspects including perception and attention. While passive media viewing presents many challenges for evaluation, identifying a number of broadly applicable metrics will aid our understanding of these experiences, and allow the creation of better, more engaging CVR content and displays.