Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

As the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced our reliance on digital technology for communication, virtual reality (VR) is poised to soon become a critical communication technology. While commercial and research platforms for VR-based communication and collaboration exist, they typically assume comparable levels of interaction fidelity. The cost of VR devices, while lower than in past decades, still presents a barrier to access to portions of the population. Low-fi smartphone-based VR devices such as Google Cardboard offer only a partial solution, as they lack the interaction fidelity of high-end devices. Moreover, cybersickness persists and presents a major barrier to accessing VR for many people. I propose to investigate these interrelated issues of developing "platform-agnostic" collaborative VR systems, intended to provide next generation communication tools that work across a variety of platforms. I further propose to incorporate low-fi smartphone-based VR devices in these collaborative systems, by developing novel methods to improve interaction on these devices through the use of camera-based marker tracking. My goal is to improve the interaction fidelity of low-fi devices to be closer to that of high-fidelity devices. Finally, in developing novel locomotion techniques for smartphone-based VR, I will further investigate methods to mitigate cybersickness in multi-user VR. Current approaches to reducing cybersickness typically involve visual modifications to the environment such as discrete motion or reducing the field of view. It is currently unclear how appropriate such techniques are in multi-user VR, as they may affect collaboration. The proposed research program will provide cutting edge training for several HQP, preparing them for placement in the rapidly growing Canadian digital media sector. It will further yield novel technologies with potential to disrupt computer-based communications. The research will "level the playing field" between high and low-fidelity VR systems, developing novel ways for people to collaborate in VR systems across varying platform capabilities. This work has potential applications in numerous real-world areas ranging from medical training, education, design, therapy, and manufacturing.