Collaborative Augmented Reality for Virtual Reality Display Wall Environments

Given the adoption of many variations of virtual and augmented reality devices such as CAVE/CAVE2, large virtual reality (VR) capable displays walls/domes, and a growing set of increasingly capable and affordable head mounted displays (HMD) in both commercial and industrial applications, it has become apparent that not one platform will be appropriate for every use case scenario. HMDs are becoming increasingly more lightweight and powerful, but in collaborative settings there always will be a need for a shared display or environment to bring discussions together. The goal of this dissertation is to leverage the best of current augmented reality (AR) head mounted display technologies: 360 degree field of regard visuals, rendering of graphics over the real world, and personalized views with the best of large display wall environments: high resolution and contrast, shared visual environment, and more accurate tracking. A collaborative user study was conducted to evaluate how two participants wearing AR HMDs (HoloLens 1 and 2) in CAVE2 work with each other and the combination of visuals on the CAVE2 shared display and the AR HMD in completing a building network wiring task in3D spatial AR. With fully immersive HMDs blocking our natural sense of communication and AR still limited by resolution and field of view, combining large VR display walls and AR may provide a middle ground to maximize the growing benefits of interacting together in virtual worlds.