Immersiveness and symmetry in copresent scenarios

Collaboration at a distance has long been a research goal of distributed virtual environments. A number of recent technologies, including immersive projection technology systems (IPTs) and head-mounted displays (HMDs), promise a new generation of technologies that are more intuitive to use than desktop-based systems. This paper presents an experiment that compares collaboration in five different settings. Pairs collaborated on the same puzzle-solving task using one of: an IPT connected to another IPT, an IPT connected to an HMD, an IPT connected to a desktop system, two connected desktop systems, or face-to-face collaboration with real objects. The findings demonstrate the benefits of using immersive technologies, and show the advantages of using symmetrical settings for better performance. Some usability problems of the different distributed settings are addressed, as well as factors such as "presence" and "copresence" and how these contribute to the participants' overall experiences.