Supporting Teamwork in Industrial Virtual Reality Applications

Virtual Reality (VR) systems allow for novel modes of visualization and interaction to support engineering design reviews. However, there are still research challenges to be addressed until companies can fully benefit from the technology’s potential. Our previous research showed that social exclusion of VR users sharing the same physical space with colleagues during a design review session has a negative influence on the communication and cooperation among team members. The work in this paper presents approaches to counteract this issue in a shared VR space for industry purpose. We describe the implementation of our concepts based on touch input and visual cues in an interactive VR environment for design review. Our evaluation in laboratory setup reveals that simple visual cues provide effective means to reduce the time to find certain details in complex VR scenes. We conclude our work with thoughts on future development steps to foster the communication between team members in a diversified VR environment.