Virtual Eye: A sensor based mobile viewer to aid collaborative decision making in virtual environments

Current virtual simulation techniques often include multi-user interactivity in virtual environments that can be controlled in real time. Such simulation techniques are mostly employed in virtual military training sessions and in real time gaming experiences, where users have to make more strategic decisions by analyzing the information they receive, in response to the actions of the other users in the same virtual environment. Generally, in the real world, collaborative decision making takes place when a team of people work together to control the behaviour of a single object which cannot be handled alone by an individual. A ship with its crew can be held as an example. When applying this scenario into virtually simulated environments, multiple users have to involve in representing a single object in the virtual world. These users need to obtain sufficient information about the activities in the environment that will contribute to the collaborative decision making process. Out of many sources, visual information is the most reliable source the users tend to depend on. The use of traditional static displays to obtain visual information limits the capability of providing a rich set of information about the 3D environment. Head Mounted Displays address these limitations while introducing several new problems. On the otherhand, our work is focused on exploring how smart devices can be employed by a collaboratively working team of users to obtain visual information to the level beyond which a static display provides, thus aiding the process of decision making. To serve the above purpose, we propose a solution, "Virtual Eye", which uses a smart mobile device with the ability to view the visual output of the virtual world and the ability to control that view according to user's orientation changes and movements with the use of its inbuilt sensors.