Abstract

In colocated multi-user Virtual Reality applications, relative user positions in the virtual environment need to match their relative positions in the physical tracking space. A mismatch between virtual and real relative user positions might lead to harmful events such as physical user collisions. This paper examines three calibration methods that enable colocated Virtual Reality scenarios for SLAM-tracked head-mounted displays without the need for an external tracking system. Two of these methods—fixed-point calibration and marked-based calibration—have been described in previous research; the third method that uses hand tracking capabilities of head-mounted displays is novel. We evaluated the accuracy of these three methods in an experimental procedure with two colocated Oculus Quest devices. The results of the evaluation show that our novel hand tracking-based calibration method provides better accuracy and consistency while at the same time being easy to execute. The paper further discusses the potential of all evaluated calibration methods.

Highlights

  • Numerous Virtual Reality (VR) applications exploit multi-user experiences, such as multi-player games in VR (Available online: https://www.tetrastudios.com.au/), virtual meeting environments emphasizing social interactions (Available online: https://spatial.io/) or casual VR chat platforms (Available online: https://hello.vrchat.com/)

  • The results of our evaluation show that the fixed-point calibration method proved to have the largest median calibration error, whereas the hand tracking-based method provided the most accurate calibration when the variant based on the tracking of two user hands was used

  • The research presented in this paper investigated three calibration methods that enable shared colocated VR scenarios for SLAM-tracked head-mounted displays (HMDs)

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Summary

Introduction

Numerous Virtual Reality (VR) applications exploit multi-user experiences, such as multi-player games in VR (Available online: https://www.tetrastudios.com.au/ (accessed on 31 January 2021)), virtual meeting environments emphasizing social interactions (Available online: https://spatial.io/ (accessed on 31 January 2021)) or casual VR chat platforms (Available online: https://hello.vrchat.com/ (accessed on 31 January 2021)). Podkosova created a taxonomy of different multi-user scenarios that are categorized with respect to varying combinations of sharing of virtual and physical spaces [2]. Setups in which users share the physical and the virtual space simultaneously are defined as colocated shared VR. Such colocated VR scenarios can be used in walkable arena-scaled environments (e.g., games or exploratory VR scenarios [1]). They can be used in seated VR scenarios, where users typically do not navigate extensively but still need to be aware of the positions of other users in the same virtual (and physical) environment

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