Towards a Collaborative 3D Interaction Model for Cooperative Design in Virtual Environments

Design of complex systems requires multi-user cooperation with virtual reality technologies to provide 3D interactions between users and virtual objects. Recent advances in both virtual reality (VR) systems and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) technologies have resulted in a convergence of the appearance of the collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) systems supporting different forms of collaboration and interaction between users. The collaboration in these systems refers to the simultaneous interactions (collaborative interaction) of multiple users on a virtual object in an immersive or semi-immersive virtual environment. In this paper, we propose a method to modeling collaborative 3D interactions that supports group interaction in CVEs. The proposed method is based on group awareness concepts (focus and nimbus) combined astutely with 3D interaction paradigms (navigation, selection and manipulation) to provide us a collaborative 3D interaction model needed to design an adaptive workflow for coordination of multi-user 3D interactions in CVEs.