Sharing viewpoints in collaborative virtual environments

We explore to what degree shared viewpoints in three-dimensional collaborative virtual environments enable effective collaboration. We apply research on shared viewpoints and telepointers to 3D environments. A lightweight Java-based tool for creating collaborative virtual environments was developed and used in the study. The system is realized as an application framework that can be customized to develop new applications. We conducted a series of experiments to assess the effectiveness of shared viewpoints on two simple tasks. Control groups were provided with telepointers. Experimental groups were provided with telepointers and shared views. The results indicate that for participants with access to both tools, shared views are preferred over telepointers for tasks involving joint exploration of either the environment or some object of common interest.