The virtual round table - a collaborative augmented multi-user environment
Wolfgang Broll, Eckhard Meier, Thomas Schardt · 2000
Existing immersed virtual reality and particularly augmented reality systems are usually based on dedicated and expensive hardware and I/O devices.Nevertheless they often provide limited support for the collaboration between multiple users and can hardly be used for arbitrary location independent application environments.Additionally, navigation and interaction within such virtual environments are not very natural or intuitive, making them difficult to use.This paper will introduce a new collaborative augmented reality environment -the Virtual Round Table.This environment is designed to support location-independent mixed reality applications, overcoming the limitations for collaboration and interaction of existing approaches.Moreover it extends the physical workplace of the users into the virtual environment, while preserving traditional verbal and non-verbal communication and cooperation mechanisms.