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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Augmented Reality
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2024.1428765

Fostering the AR Illusion: A Study of How People Interact with a Shared Artifact in Collocated Augmented Reality

Provisionally accepted
Jifan Yang Jifan Yang 1*Steven Bednarski Steven Bednarski 2Alison Bullock Alison Bullock 3Robin Harrap Robin Harrap 1Zack MacDonald Zack MacDonald 4Andrew Moore Andrew Moore 5T.C. Nicholas Graham T.C. Nicholas Graham 1*
  • 1 Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
  • 2 DRAGEN Lab, St. Jerome's University in the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
  • 3 Waterloo Region District School Board, Kitchener, Canada
  • 4 Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
  • 5 University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Augmented Reality (AR), a technology that overlays virtual objects on a physical environment.The illusion afforded by AR is that these virtual artifacts can be treated like physical ones, allowing people to view them from different perspectives and point at them knowing that others see them in the same place. Despite extensive research in AR, there has been surprisingly little research into how people embrace this AR illusion, and in what ways the illusion breaks down. In this paper, we report the results of an exploratory, mixed methods study with six pairs of participants playing the novel Sightline AR game. The study showed that participants changed physical position and pose to view virtual artifacts from different perspectives and engaged in conversations around the artifacts. Being able to see the real environment allowed participants to maintain awareness of other participants' actions and locus of attention. Players largely entered the illusion of interacting with a shared physical/virtual artifact, but some interactions broke the illusion, such as pointing into space. Some participants reported fatigue around holding their tablet devices and taking on uncomfortable poses.

    Keywords: augmented reality, AR Illusion, Collocated collaboration, kinaesthetic interaction, AR games

    Received: 07 May 2024; Accepted: 23 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Yang, Bednarski, Bullock, Harrap, MacDonald, Moore and Graham. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Jifan Yang, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada
    T.C. Nicholas Graham, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.