Group Navigation for Guided Tours in Distributed Virtual Environments

Group navigation can be an invaluable tool for performing guided tours in distributed virtual environments. Related work suggests that group navigation techniques should be comprehensible for both the guide and the attendees, assist the group in avoiding collisions with obstacles, and allow the creation of meaningful spatial arrangements with respect to objects of interest. To meet these requirements, we developed a group navigation technique based on short-distance teleportation (jumping) and evaluated its usability, comprehensibility, and scalability in an initial user study. After navigating with groups of up to 10 users through a virtual museum, participants indicated that our technique is easy to learn for guides, comprehensible also for attendees, non-nauseating for both roles, and therefore well-suited for performing guided tours.