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A Multi-platform Collaborative Architecture for Multi-User eXtended Reality Applications

4 pagesPublished: February 16, 2023

Abstract

In the last years, new visualization devices related to technologies like AR, MR and VR have emerged. Such devices have proven to be useful for numerous medical, industrial and manufacturing processes, but the technologies they use tend to be platform dependent. Currently, the Khronos group is making an effort to change this thanks to the OpenXR framework, which provides tools to standardize the development for different XR (Extended Reality) platforms. However, many processes and tasks require multiple users to interact with the same virtual environment simultaneously. To tackle this issue, this paper presents an XR solution that allows for the creation of collaborative applications that can be used at the same time by different platforms, such as computers (i.e., Windows, Mac or Linux PCs) and Mixed Reality smart glasses (e.g., Microsoft HoloLens 2). The proposed architecture is based on Unity and Mirror, a high-level networking tool for the mentioned game engine. The solution allows developers to design just one application that could be compiled and deployed to different platform devices without the need for changing any configuration or for adapting the project to each of the platform requisites. The proposed system also allows for using multiple devices simultaneously, providing a new way for collaborative interaction with the application, showing all the visual components synchronized in the same position and in the same state, thus facilitating communications and awareness of the environment for the developed XR experiences.

Keyphrases: augmented reality, extended reality, microsoft hololens, mixed reality, multi platform, unity

In: Alvaro Leitao and Lucía Ramos (editors). Proceedings of V XoveTIC Conference. XoveTIC 2022, vol 14, pages 148-151.

BibTeX entry
@inproceedings{XoveTIC2022:Multi_platform_Collaborative_Architecture,
  author    = {Aida Vidal-Balea and Óscar Blanco-Novoa and Paula Fraga-Lamas and Tiago M. Fernández-Caramés},
  title     = {A Multi-platform Collaborative Architecture for Multi-User eXtended Reality Applications},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of V XoveTIC Conference. XoveTIC 2022},
  editor    = {Alvaro Leitao and Lucía Ramos},
  series    = {Kalpa Publications in Computing},
  volume    = {14},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2515-1762},
  url       = {/publications/paper/D8FM},
  doi       = {10.29007/mlwx},
  pages     = {148-151},
  year      = {2023}}
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