On extending collaboration in virtual reality environments

We characterize the feature superset of collaborative virtual reality environments (CVRE) out of existing implementations, and derive a novel component framework for transforming standalone VR tools into fully fledged multi-threaded collaborative environments. The contributions of our approach rely on cost-effective techniques for loading graphics rendering, user interaction and network communications software components into separate threads, with a top thread for session collaboration. The framework recasts VR tools under a scalable peer-to-peer topology for scene sharing, callback hooks for event broadcasting and multicamera perspectives of avatar interaction. We validate the framework by applying it to our own ALICE VR Navigator. Experimental results show the good performance of our approach in the collaborative inspection of complex models.