Acting rehearsal in collaborative multimodal mixed reality environments

This paper presents the use of our multimodal mixed reality telecommunication system to support remote acting rehearsal. The rehearsals involved two actors, located in London and Barcelona, and a director in another location in London. This triadic audiovisual telecommunication was performed in a spatial and multimodal collaborative mixed reality environment based on the 'destination-visitor' paradigm, which we define and put into use. We detail our heterogeneous system architecture, which spans the three distributed and technologically asymmetric sites, and features a range of capture, display, and transmission technologies. The actors' and director's experience of rehearsing a scene via the system are then discussed, exploring successes and failures of this heterogeneous form of telecollaboration. Overall, the common spatial frame of reference presented by the system to all parties was highly conducive to theatrical acting and directing, allowing blocking, gross gesture, and unambiguous instruction to be issued. The relative inexpressivity of the actors' embodiments was identified as the central limitation of the telecommunication, meaning that moments relying on performing and reacting to consequential facial expression and subtle gesture were less successful

An Exploration of Theatre Rehearsals in Social Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) offers potential for theatre makers to rehearse remotely in settings which are uniquely immersive. In collaboration with a major drama school in the United Kingdom, a longitudinal diary study was completed to examine the utility of consumer-grade VR for theatre rehearsals. Utilising commonly affordable headsets and general-purpose Social VR applications, 10 experienced students (2 directors, 8 actors) rehearsed scenes in VR over 3 weeks, before performing them in person. Participants detailed their experiences in diary logs and interviews, expressing the ability to work through spatial arrangements (blocking) as a full body avatar to be positively beneficial. Limitations included the absence of facial expressions and gestural nuance. Our overarching conclusion is that low-tech VR can be a useful aid in theatre rehearsals and early stages of production. In conclusion we outline design recommendations for a) using VR in theatre production and b) research and development of Social VR.</p

An Exploration of Theatre Rehearsals in Social Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) offers potential for theatre makers to rehearse remotely in settings which are uniquely immersive. In collaboration with a major drama school in the United Kingdom, a longitudinal diary study was completed to examine the utility of consumer-grade VR for theatre rehearsals. Utilising commonly affordable headsets and general-purpose Social VR applications, 10 experienced students (2 directors, 8 actors) rehearsed scenes in VR over 3 weeks, before performing them in person. Participants detailed their experiences in diary logs and interviews, expressing the ability to work through spatial arrangements (blocking) as a full body avatar to be positively beneficial. Limitations included the absence of facial expressions and gestural nuance. Our overarching conclusion is that low-tech VR can be a useful aid in theatre rehearsals and early stages of production. In conclusion we outline design recommendations for a) using VR in theatre production and b) research and development of Social VR.</p

The Effects of Sharing Awareness Cues in Collaborative Mixed Reality

Augmented and Virtual Reality provide unique capabilities for Mixed Reality collaboration. This paper explores how different combinations of virtual awareness cues can provide users with valuable information about their collaborator's attention and actions. In a user study (n = 32, 16 pairs), we compared different combinations of three cues: Field-of-View (FoV) frustum, Eye-gaze ray, and Head-gaze ray against a baseline condition showing only virtual representations of each collaborator's head and hands. Through a collaborative object finding and placing task, the results showed that awareness cues significantly improved user performance, usability, and subjective preferences, with the combination of the FoV frustum and the Head-gaze ray being best. This work establishes the feasibility of room-scale MR collaboration and the utility of providing virtual awareness cues

Acting rehearsal in collaborative multimodal mixed reality environments

This paper presents the use of our multimodal mixed reality telecommunication system to support remote acting rehearsal. The rehearsals involved two actors, located in London and Barcelona, and a director in another location in London. This triadic audiovisual telecommunication was performed in a spatial and multimodal collaborative mixed reality environment based on the 'destination-visitor' paradigm, which we define and put into use. We detail our heterogeneous system architecture, which spans the three distributed and technologically asymmetric sites, and features a range of capture, display, and transmission technologies. The actors' and director's experience of rehearsing a scene via the system are then discussed, exploring successes and failures of this heterogeneous form of telecollaboration. Overall, the common spatial frame of reference presented by the system to all parties was highly conducive to theatrical acting and directing, allowing blocking, gross gesture, and unambiguous instruction to be issued. The relative inexpressivity of the actors' embodiments was identified as the central limitation of the telecommunication, meaning that moments relying on performing and reacting to consequential facial expression and subtle gesture were less successful

Videos in Context for Telecommunication and Spatial Browsing

The research presented in this thesis explores the use of videos embedded in panoramic imagery to transmit spatial and temporal information describing remote environments and their dynamics. Virtual environments (VEs) through which users can explore remote locations are rapidly emerging as a popular medium of presence and remote collaboration. However, capturing visual representation of locations to be used in VEs is usually a tedious process that requires either manual modelling of environments or the employment of specific hardware. Capturing environment dynamics is not straightforward either, and it is usually performed through specific tracking hardware. Similarly, browsing large unstructured video-collections with available tools is difficult, as the abundance of spatial and temporal information makes them hard to comprehend. At the same time, on a spectrum between 3D VEs and 2D images, panoramas lie in between, as they offer the same 2D images accessibility while preserving 3D virtual environments surrounding representation. For this reason, panoramas are an attractive basis for videoconferencing and browsing tools as they can relate several videos temporally and spatially. This research explores methods to acquire, fuse, render and stream data coming from heterogeneous cameras, with the help of panoramic imagery. Three distinct but interrelated questions are addressed. First, the thesis considers how spatially localised video can be used to increase the spatial information transmitted during video mediated communication, and if this improves quality of communication. Second, the research asks whether videos in panoramic context can be used to convey spatial and temporal information of a remote place and the dynamics within, and if this improves users' performance in tasks that require spatio-temporal thinking. Finally, the thesis considers whether there is an impact of display type on reasoning about events within videos in panoramic context. These research questions were investigated over three experiments, covering scenarios common to computer-supported cooperative work and video browsing. To support the investigation, two distinct video+context systems were developed. The first telecommunication experiment compared our videos in context interface with fully-panoramic video and conventional webcam video conferencing in an object placement scenario. The second experiment investigated the impact of videos in panoramic context on quality of spatio-temporal thinking during localization tasks. To support the experiment, a novel interface to video-collection in panoramic context was developed and compared with common video-browsing tools. The final experimental study investigated the impact of display type on reasoning about events. The study explored three adaptations of our video-collection interface to three display types. The overall conclusion is that videos in panoramic context offer a valid solution to spatio-temporal exploration of remote locations. Our approach presents a richer visual representation in terms of space and time than standard tools, showing that providing panoramic contexts to video collections makes spatio-temporal tasks easier. To this end, videos in context are suitable alternative to more difficult, and often expensive solutions. These findings are beneficial to many applications, including teleconferencing, virtual tourism and remote assistance