PACT: Modeling Coordination Dynamics in Scale-Asymmetric Virtual Reality Collaboration

In virtual reality (VR), collaborators often experience the same environment at different visual scales, disrupting shared attention and increasing coordination difficulty. While prior work has focused on preventing misalignment, less is known about how teams recover when alignment fails. We examine collaboration under scale asymmetry, a particularly disruptive form of perceptual divergence. In a study with 36 VR teams, we identify behavioral patterns that distinguish adaptive recovery from persistent breakdown. Successful teams flexibly shifted between user-driven and system-supported cues, while others repeated ineffective strategies. Based on these findings, we introduce the Perceptual Asymmetry Coordination Theory (PACT), a dual-pathway model that describes coordination as an evolving process shaped by cue integration and strategic responsiveness. PACT reframes recovery not as a return to alignment, but as a dynamic adaptation to misalignment. These insights inform the design of VR systems that support recovery through multi-channel, adaptive coordination in scale-divergent environments.