C1x6: A Stereoscopic Six-User Display for Co-located Collaboration in Shared Virtual Environments

Stereoscopic multi-user systems provide multiple users with individual views of a virtual environment. We developed a new projection-based stereoscopic display for six users, which employs six customized DLP projectors for fast time-sequential image display in combination with polarization. Our intelligent high-speed shutter glasses can be programmed from the application to adapt to the situation. For instance, it does this by staying open if users do not look at the projection screen or switch to a VIP high brightness mode if less than six users use the system. Each user is tracked and can move freely in front of the display while perceiving perspectively correct views of the virtual environment.

Navigating a group of six users through a virtual world leads to situations in which the group will not fit through spatial constrictions. Our augmented group navigation techniques ameliorate this situation by fading out obstacles or by slightly redirecting individual users along a collision-free path. While redirection goes mostly unnoticed, both techniques temporarily give up the notion of a consistent shared space. Our user study confirms that users generally prefer this trade-off over naive approaches.

This work was supported in part by the European Union under grant 217140 (project IMVIS), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under grant 03IP704 (project Intelligentes Lernen) and  the Thuringian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs (TKM) under grant B514-08028 (project Visual Analytics in Engineering).

The New Scientist featured our work with the article Virtual traveller: Beam a live, 3D you into the world

See also the German New Scientist article Holodeck im Bauhaus