We integrate situational awareness, video annotation and interpersonal communication tools to the immersive video experience, opening the possibility for a wide range of applications for business, education and entertainment uses. These discussions can be saved locally or shared for future playback, spreading ideas openly.

PanoVR is a collaborative viewer for 360° media content. With the advent of low-cost 360° camera technology, there has been a rapid upsurge in the availability of 360° content; however, little has been done to utilize the potential of this immersive content as a medium for education and innovation. PanoVR allows multiple users to interact with and experience content at the same time while performing collaborative video analytical tasks while connected to a real-time stream of footage. Features include mutual awareness of other users’ viewing directions, voice chat, line annotations and synchronized controls.

Acknowledgments: Duke University Office of Information Technology has provided material support for the execution of this project. The project has been funded by Duke Digital Initiative and NSF, through US Ignite.

Team Information: Duke DiVE, Development of PanoVR has been done under the direction of Dr. Regis Kopper. Dr. Kopper is the Director of Duke Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE) laboratory. His research interests include 3D user interfaces, virtual human interaction, novel interaction techniques and large high-resolution displays. The development is being carried through by electrical engineering and computer science students Mitchell Berger, Isaac Anderson, Rayan Tofique and Alexander Blumenstock.