Technological advances enable the development of new low vision aids. One such new technology is virtual reality (VR). Existing VR applications offer a variety of adjustments to the content and the user's environment to support people with low vision. Yet, an interaction concept to conveniently activate and control these aids is missing. Therefore, we designed and implemented an interaction concept based on user and expert feedback and evaluated it in a user study. Our application offers various aids to support residual vision and a radial menu for intuitive use of these aids. The results of the user study show that the VR application allows simple task solving comparable to a desktop computer. Furthermore, the user study gives an insight into the effects of different visual impairments on the usage of VR, since the field of view has a larger impact than visual acuity. Overall, our results indicate that VR is a suitable aid to support the individual needs of users with low vision.

The importance of remote collaboration grows in an interconnected world as the reasons to avoid travel increase. The spatial rendering and collaboration capabilities of virtual and augmented reality systems are well suited for tasks such as support or training. Users can take a shared perspective to build a common understanding. Also, users may engage in face-to-face cooperation to support interpersonal communication. However, a shared perspective and face-to-face collaboration are both desirable but naturally exclude each other. We place all users at the same location to provide a shared perspective. To avoid overlapping body parts, the avatars of the other connected users are shifted to the side. A redirected body pose modification corrects the resulting inconsistencies. The implemented system is compared to a baseline of two users standing in the same location and working with overlapping avatars. The results of a user study show that the proposed modifications provide an easy to use, efficient collaboration and yield higher co-presence and the feeling of teamwork. Applying redirection techniques to other users opens up novel ways to increase social presence for local or remote collaboration.

Immersive output and effortless input are two core aspects of a virtual reality (VR) experience. We transfer ubiquitous touch interaction with haptic feedback into a virtual environment (VE). The movable and cheap real world object supplies an accurate touch detection equal to a ray-casting interaction with a controller. Moreover, the virtual tablet extends the functionality of a real world tablet. Additional information is displayed in mid-air around the touchable area and the tablet can be turned over to interact with both sides. It allows easy to learn and precise system interaction and can even augment the established touch metaphor with new paradigms.

Virtual Reality opens up new possibilities as it allows to overcome real-life limitations and create novel experiences. While interacting with other people, it is beneficial to share a common view point. We modify the virtual world to allow face-to-face interaction with another person, while still retaining an optimal point of view on presented data. This is done by adapting the virtual environment independently for each user, using translation, rotation and scaling. The presented modification of the world gives a natural solution to the problems of collaborative analysis of content. It is therefore beneficial for usage in human-human interaction scenarios that support cooperative work.