Towards Large Scale High Fidelity Collaborative Augmented Reality

Rompapas Damien Constantine


In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of Collaborative Augmented Reality (CAR) experiences, classifiable by the deployed scale and the fidelity of the experience.

In this thesis, I first explore the LSHF CAR design space, drawing on technical implementations and design aspects from AR and video games. I then create and implement a software architecture that improves the accuracy of synchronized poses between multiple users. Finally, I apply my target experience and technical implementation to the explored design space.

A core design component of HoloRoyale is the use of visual repellers as crowd control elements to guide players away from undesired areas. To evaluate the effectiveness of the employed visual repellers in a LSHF CAR context I conducted a user study, deploying HoloRoyale in a 12.500m2 area. The results from the user study suggest that visual repellers are effective crowd control elements that do not significantly impact the user's overall immersion.

Finally this thesis expands on EyeAR: refocusable content on Optical See-Through Head Mounted Displays (OST-HMDs), evaluating the fidelity of refocusable content displayed on a single plane OST-HMD via. a modified Touring Test. The results from the evaluation show that refocusable content improves the fidelity of OST-HMD experiences.

This work is the first to explore the domain of LSHF CAR and provides insight into designing experiences in other AR domains.