Abstract
Abstract. We present a virtual reality (VR) setup that enables multiple users to participate in collaborative virtual environments and interact via gestures. A collaborative VR session is established through a network of users that is composed of a server and a set of clients. The server manages the communication amongst clients and is created by one of the users. Each user’s VR setup consists of a Head Mounted Display (HMD) for immersive visualisation, a hand tracking system to interact with virtual objects and a single-hand joypad to move in the virtual environment. We use Google Cardboard as a HMD for the VR experience and a Leap Motion for hand tracking, thus making our solution low cost. We evaluate our VR setup though a forensics use case, where real-world objects pertaining to a simulated crime scene are included in a VR environment, acquired using a smartphone-based 3D reconstruction pipeline. Users can interact using virtual gesture-based tools such as pointers and rulers.
Highlights
Virtual Reality (VR) has innovated the way we analyse, interact with and enjoy 3D data through the creation of immersive visual experiences
Users can experience immersive VR through wearable head mounted displays (HMDs) that perform an egocentric encoding of the scene, whereas allocentric-encoded scenes displayed through computer screens lead to non-immersive VR experiences (Kozhevnikov and Gurlitt, 2013)
Cardboard devices communicate through WiFi facilitating users to collaborate in the same VR environment without necessary being in the same physical place
Summary
Virtual Reality (VR) has innovated the way we analyse, interact with and enjoy 3D data through the creation of immersive visual experiences. Users are able to reconstruct real-world objects in 3D, manipulate their reconstructed models in VR space, and share them in a shared environment across different users, entirely on their smartphones This fast-growing technological progress is leading to new applications and ways we create, access and share digital content, stimulating interconnectivity activities in multi-user VR spaces. Despite modern smartphones’ powerful processor capabilities, the Leap Motion SDK does not yet support a direct connection between smartphones and Leap Motion devices We have bypassed this limitation by connecting the Leap Motion to a computer and streaming hand-tracking data to smartphones via WiFi. To the best of our knowledge, our approach is the first work that enables multiple users to collaborate within a shared virtual environment through gesture-based interactions using Cardboard. We analyse bandwidth usage as a function of connected users using off-the-shelf networking hardware and smartphones
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
