The ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST) is an international forum for the exchange of experience and knowledge among researchers and developers concerned with VR/AR software and technology. The 3D Interaction Group would like to acknowledge its member’s contributions to VRST 2025.
Exploring Bichronous Collaboration in Virtual Environments
Alexander Giovannelli, Cherelle Connor, Fionn Murphy, Trey Davis, and Doug Bowman
Abstract: Virtual environments (VEs) empower geographically distributed teams to collaborate on a shared project regardless of time. Existing research has separately investigated collaborations within these VEs at the same time (i.e., synchronous) or different times (i.e., asynchronous). In this work, we highlight the often-overlooked concept of bichronous collaboration and define it as the seamless integration of archived information during a real-time collaborative session. We revisit the time-space matrix of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and reclassify the time dimension as a continuum. We describe a system that empowers collaboration across the temporal states of the time continuum within a VE during remote work. We conducted a user study using the system to discover how the bichronous temporal state impacts the user experience during a collaborative inspection. Findings indicate that the bichronous temporal state is beneficial to collaborative activities for information processing, but has drawbacks such as changed interaction and positioning behaviors in the VE.