Enabling Collaborative Interaction with 360° Panoramas between Large-scale Displays and Immersive Headsets

Head mounted displays (HMDs) can provide users with an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience, but often are limited to viewing a single environment or data set at a time. In this paper, we describe a system of networked applications whereby co-located users in the real world can use a large-scale display wall to collaborate and share data with immersed users wearing HMDs. Our work focuses on the sharing of 360° surround-view panoramic images and contextual annotations. The large-scale display wall affords non-immersed users the ability to view a multitude of contextual information and the HMDs afford the ability for users to immerse themselves in a virtual scene. The asymmetric virtual reality collaboration between immersed and non-immersed individuals can lead to deeper under-standing and the feeling of a shared experience. We will highlight a series of use cases – two digital humanities projects that capture real locations using a 360° camera, and one scientific discovery project that uses computer generated 360° surround-view panoramas. In all cases, groups can benefit from both the immersive capabilities of HMDs and the collaborative affordances of large-scale display walls, and a unified experience is created for all users.