Working with social VR
Phil Jones, Tess Osborne, Calla Sullivan-Drage, Natasha Keen, Eleanor Gadsby · Policy Press eBooks · 2022
This chapter examines social VR experiences and the research opportunities offered where multiple users are interacting with the same virtual environment. Mechanisms for collaboration within virtual space are examined alongside the critical role that avatar design plays in these interactions. While the nature of the head-mounted display is to cut people off from the world around them, VR users can form alternative communities within the virtual spaces they visit. We reflect on some of these issues through a case study of VR Church, where worshippers come together for virtual church services within the social VR platform AltspaceVR. This provides an opportunity to reflect on the challenges of undertaking ethnographic research with communities in VR.