Co-Experiencing Virtual Spaces: A Standalone Multiuser Virtual Reality Framework

This paper shows the development of a standalone, co-location multiuser virtual reality tracking system. The assumption is that multiuser VR can greatly increase the immersive aspects and real-world presence and can cause the virtual environment to create a more powerful impression than when experienced by a single user. We developed and released a framework on Github under an CC-license [1] for the accessible game engine Unity [2]. This allows multiple users to join the same virtual environment while also sharing the same real-world space congruently. For this purpose, their tracking areas are aligned, and information is exchanged over a network.