Nested immersion: Describing and classifying augmented virtual reality

We present a system, intended for automotive design review use cases, that incorporates a tracked tablet in a CAVE, where both the tablet and the CAVE provide different views and interaction possibilities within the same virtual scene. At its core, this idea is not novel. However, the literature reveals few examples of this paradigm in which virtual information is presented on a second physical device to augment an immersive virtual environment. Similarly, it is unclear where the system should be positioned within existing augmented/mixed/virtual reality taxonomies. We argue that interactions occur within a nesting of virtual and physical contexts, and that formalizing these relationships is important when attempting to understand perceptual issues. The goal of this paper is, thus, to describe the new system by proposing a scheme to formally identify sources of bias and then adapting an existing taxonomy to classify such systems.