A Helpful Relocation Function for Augmenting Teaching in a Multiple User Shared Virtual Environment

Virtual reality platforms have dramatically both grown in popularity and uses over the past few years. Their critical uses as a teaching tool are currently being investigated; with promising preliminary results. While VR allows users to enter a virtual environment with unparalleled levels of immersion, there are some apparent limitations that arise when it is used as a teaching tool; primarily that it is difficult to achieve high levels of collaboration during utilization. As such, research has been done to develop shared virtual environments that allow multiple users to enter the same virtual space, represented by avatars, and interact with one another. However, these systems have additional drawbacks, i.e. it is incredibly difficult to find other users in a virtual environment. This becomes especially true in most teaching scenarios; for example, where an instructor desires to show students multiple noteworthy locations within the same anatomical environment. Here we propose a solution, an update to our current shared virtual reality anatomy environments, that allows users to instantly relocate to the position of the instructor/proctor. This solution reduces the time needed in the virtual environment to direct students to critical anatomic features: i.e., when users are attempting to locate the instructor. In other words, this feature aids to maximize the time spent instructing and learning critical aspects of the immersive virtual reality environments: here we will focus on scenes utilized for teaching human anatomy.