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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2024.1478481

Investigating Co-presence and Collaboration Dynamics in Realtime Virtual Reality User Interactions

Provisionally accepted
Solomon Sunday Oyelere Solomon Sunday Oyelere 1,2,3*SEYED ALIREZA GHASEMPOUR YOUSEFDEH SEYED ALIREZA GHASEMPOUR YOUSEFDEH 2
  • 1 Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
  • 2 Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Norrbotten, Sweden
  • 3 Johannesburg Business School, College of Business and Economics, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

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

    As Virtual Reality (VR) technologies advance and gain popularity, their potential as powerful tools for collaboration is increasingly recognized. VR facilitates interaction with the virtual presence of individuals who are not physically co-located. Understanding the dynamics of user interactions and the cognitive perception of virtual presence quality is essential for this technology's progression. This paper introduces CoCoVR, a VR measurement method for measuring the sense of co-presence and collaboration quality among users through real-time data collection and analysis. CoCoVR is evaluated across various scenarios to understand user interactions in VR under different conditions. An extensive analysis of recent literature has been performed that identified avatar realism and communication as two key factors influencing co-presence and collaboration. The experiment includes a custom VR application, the Soma cube puzzle, and real-time sensors. A between-subject experiment was conducted to collect and analyzes real-time data on collaboration and co-presence. This study integrates both objective and subjective measures, offering deeper insights into the immersive experience and its impact on collaborative tasks. The findings show that avatar realism enhances the feeling of co-presence and that communication methods substantially improve collaboration. Additionally, the study found that measuring physiological responses can serve as a novel method for evaluating the quality of user collaborations.CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing.

    Keywords: VR, virtual reality, collaboration, Co-presence, sense of presence, data analysis, Collaborative Virtual Environment, virtual environment

    Received: 09 Aug 2024; Accepted: 18 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Oyelere and YOUSEFDEH. 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: Solomon Sunday Oyelere, Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

    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.