Collaboration Platform in VR

Overview

Remote collaboration tools are largely confined to flat screens — video calls, shared documents, screen sharing. This project explored what collaboration looks like when participants share a three-dimensional virtual space. The platform enables multiple VR users to meet, communicate via spatial voice, and interact with shared objects like 3D models, documents, whiteboards, and media players in a persistent virtual environment.

Process & Approach

The design process started with studying existing social VR platforms and identifying key interaction patterns for productive collaboration: spatial awareness, proxemic behavior, and multimodal communication. I evaluated and implemented multiple networking solutions in Unity to find one that could synchronize user avatars (driven by IK from headset and controller tracking), voice audio, and shared object state with acceptable latency. The avatar system uses inverse kinematics to map VR controller input to full upper-body animation, giving users a sense of physical co-presence.

Key Features

• Real-time networked VR with synchronized avatar presence
• Spatial voice communication with distance-based attenuation
• Shared interactive objects: 3D models, documents, whiteboards
• Audio/video playback in shared virtual space
• IK-driven avatars from HMD and controller tracking data

Technical Challenges

Synchronizing complex interaction state across a network while maintaining VR frame rates was the core challenge. Object ownership, conflict resolution when multiple users grab the same object, and maintaining consistent physics state required careful networking architecture. Voice spatialization had to feel natural without introducing perceptible latency that would break conversational flow.

Impact & Learnings

The project provided valuable insight into the design requirements of social VR workspaces — particularly around proxemic behaviors (how close virtual avatars should stand) and the importance of consistent spatial audio for maintaining the illusion of shared presence. These learnings informed subsequent work on networked XR applications.