2nd Joint Workshop on Cross Reality

Scope of the Workshop

Cross Reality (CR) is an emerging technology that focuses on the concurrent usage of or the transition between multiple systems at different points on the reality-virtuality continuum (RVC), including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Virtuality (AV), and Augmented Reality (AR). CR has gained significant attention in recent years due to its potential for revolutionizing various research and industry areas where users need to comprehend and explore spatial data and its relevant information in different forms. It is expected that in the near future, more CR applications will arise to allow users to transition along the individual stages of the RVC or to collaborate between these stages to use their distinct advantages and mitigate their potential problems.

Figure: Selected Submissions Proposing Cross-Reality Systems. A) Cross-Reality Collaboration across PC, AR and VR [Schröder et al., 2023]. B) Cross-Device Augmented Reality with SecondSight [Reichherzer et al., 2021]. C) Cross-Reality Data Analysis with ReLive [Hubenschmid et al., 2022].

CR Visualization refers to the ability to create and display abstract or inherently spatial data along the RVC. The visual representations of a Cross-Reality system offer different degrees of virtuality to users and enable users to seamlessly move back and forth across the reality-virtuality continuum.

CR Interaction allows users to naturally and intuitively engage with real and virtual objects and environments. CR enables various forms of interaction, including hand gestures, voice commands, haptic feedback, and eye-tracking. Advanced interaction techniques for object manipulation, locomotion, and spatial interaction enhance the level of immersion and interactivity in CR experiences, enabling users to seamlessly perform complex tasks and interactions.

CR User Behavior and Experience are concerned with how users perceive and respond to visual content in CR environments. CR technology enables users to immerse themselves in virtual or augmented reality spaces, allowing them to interact with and seamlessly transition between virtual and physical environments and objects.

CR Design and Development is concerned with processes, methods, and tools to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of design and development teams tasked with creating CR applications and systems. Testing and evaluation are a substantial part of these processes.

CR Collaboration is an area of growing interest, as it allows users to work together in real and virtual environments using different interaction techniques and interfaces with different degrees of virtuality. Collaborative CR experiences have the potential to enhance local, remote, and hybrid communication, foster creativity, and improve decision-making in various domains such as design, training, and education.

CR Applications have the potential to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of real-life tasks in diverse industries. However, there needs to be more empirical evidence to support claims made about the advantages of serious CR; namely, more CR applications need to demonstrate their benefit in solving real-life tasks and be evaluated by empirical studies with the respective user group.

Last year, the 1st Joint Workshop on Cross Reality held in conjunction with the IEEE ISMAR 2023 brought together the community of CR researchers from five separate workshops on individual CR topics. The workshop drew a lot of attention andwhere participants established the research area further. There were over 50 participants who joined the 1st JWCR in person with over 20 participants joiningjoined online. This is a follow-up workshop to explore the new challenges, solutions, and opportunities in the field of CR and provide a comprehensive overview of the related research on the design of interactive techniques for effective CR visualization, interaction, collaboration, user experience, behavior, and engineering. We are particularly interested in blurring the lines between and merging the virtual and physical worlds to support users in understanding data in different forms. The workshop provides a forum for researchers from VR/AV/AR/MR, visualization, HCI, and related fields to present their technical and systems papers that introduce new approaches, ideas, discussions, and applications.

Topics of interest

The workshop solicits submissions of unpublished works on topics including (but not limited to) the following applications and emerging topics in CR visualization, interaction, collaboration, and user behavior and experience:

Cross Reality environment design: virtuality and reality
Computational and Adaptive Cross Reality Systems
Visual representations in Cross Reality systems
Cross Reality transitions across multiple interfaces
Cross Reality interaction
Multimodal interaction, perception, and cognition
Real-world tool use and tangibles as input to CR systems
Collaborative Cross Reality immersive analytics
Collaboration across the reality-virtuality continuum
Cross Reality user experience
Cross Reality user behavior
Cross Reality tools, frameworks, and APIs
Testing Cross Reality systems
Design guidelines for Cross Reality applications
Evaluation of Cross Reality experiences and systems
Cross Reality applications and scenarios
Cross Reality use cases in, e.g., education, industry, transportation, sports, healthcare

Selected papers will be recommended for a special journal issue linked to this workshop. These revised papers are expected to have 30-40% new materials and will be reviewed by the same reviewers from the technical committee to allow for a fast review process.

Figure: Prototypes of Published Cross-Reality Systems in the Prototyping Tool VRception.

Workshop Structure

This will be a full-day workshop with a mixture of presentations of short position papers and group work discussing important topics for current and future research. Position papers will each be presented for four minutes plus two minutes of discussion, while a majority of the time will be allocated for the group discussion activity. It will be a hybrid event supporting both face-to-face and online participation. A discord channel will be created, enabling people to discuss the workshop topic both before and after the ISMAR event.

Submissions

We welcome position paper submissions from 2-4 pages long, excluding references. All paper submissions must be in English. Paper quality versus length will be assessed according to a contribution-per-page judgment. All submissions will be accepted or rejected as workshop papers. All accepted papers will be archived in the IEEE Xplore digital library. Detailed submission and review guidelines are available on the workshop website at that link: https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/.

All paper submissions must be made through EasyChair using that link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=jwcr24.

2nd Joint Workshop on Cross Reality to be held in conjunction with the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2024)

Scope of the Workshop

Important Dates