In this work we present a collaborative virtual reality application for distributed engineering tasks, including a simple avatar calibration method. Use cases for the application include CAD review, ergonomics analyses or virtual training. Full-body avatars with approximately natural motion characteristics are used to improve collaboration in terms of co-presence and embodiment. Through a calibration process, scaled avatars based on body measurements can be generated by users from within the VR application. For motion tracking, only the tracking capabilities of the VR devices used (head mounted display and hand controllers) are required, in order to achieve a low initialization effort for usage of the application. We demonstrate a simple, yet effective method for measuring the human body which requires these VR devices only. Tracking only the user's head and hands, we require inverse kinematics (IK) for avatar motion reconstruction. On the other hand, this requires a calibrated avatar, otherwise body postures and gestures will be misrepresented. In the first step of the demo, two users can create their calibrated avatar at the same time and then carry out a collaborative CAD review in the second step.

Virtual Reality supports collaboration among partners across departments and fields, independent of physical boundaries. Virtual reality applications can solve the time and cost consuming logistic problem that companies encounter when sending experts to remote locations. However, it is not yet clear how effective partners collaborate when in remote locations. In one experiment, we examined whether partners who are physically in the same room and interact with each other before they start collaborating affects performance compared to collaborators who meet and interact only within the virtual space. Participants had to solve a Rubik's cube type three-dimensional puzzle by arranging cubes that varied in color within a solution space in such a way, so that each side of the solution space showed a single color. Participants were immersed within a virtual environment and in one condition participants were collocated in the same room (local condition), while in the other one they were located in different rooms (remote condition). Results showed that collaborators in both conditions successfully completed the task but performance was better during the local compared to the remote condition.