System Evaluation of a Mixed Reality-Based Collaborative Prototype for Mechanical Design Review Collaboration
Xiangyu Wang, Phillip S. Dunston · 2005
Mechanical contractors acknowledge that the efficiency of current design review practices might be substantially improved by using 3D visualization techniques to amplify the effectiveness of the design review team. To reach this goal, the concept of a Mixed Reality-based collaborative virtual environment (MRCVE), has been formulated, which aims to support the collaborative design review process by enabling multiple parties to work on a routine task based on downscaled virtual models. One usable prototype based on the MRCVE concept is an MR-based face-to-face conferencing system, which could facilitate collaboration in face-to-face scenarios. This paper presents some results of an experiment implemented to demonstrate the capability of the system in realistic environments. The benefits of MR-based face-to-face conferencing were validated through comparison with prevalent paper-based 3D drawing review in the task of identifying design errors. The complete methodology, experimental design, experimental results and discussion are elaborated in the paper.