Cinemacraft: exploring fidelity cues in collaborative virtual world interactions

The research presented in this paper explores the contribution of avatar fidelity to social interaction in virtual environments and how sensory fusion can improve these interactions. Specifically, we vary levels of interaction fidelity to investigate how responsiveness and behavioural realism affect people's experience of interacting with virtual humans. This is accomplished through the creation of Cinemacraft, a technology-mediated immersive platform for collaborative human-computer interaction. Cinemacraft leverages a voxel game engine similar to Minecraft to facilitate collaborative interaction in a virtual 3D world and incorporates sensory fusion to improve the fidelity of real-time collaboration. The primary hypothesis of the study is that embodied interactions result in a higher degree of presence, and that sensory fusion can improve the quality of presence and co-presence. We tested our hypothesis through a user-study of 24 participants. Based on suggestions from existing literature, we sidestep the uncanny valley effect through the use of low fidelity avatars (a la Minecraft) and identify cues that impact users ratings of presence, co-presence and successful collaboration. The findings and ensuing data in this research can be applied to produce a more compelling platform for live collaborative interactions, performances, and empathetic storytelling. This research contributes to the field of immersive, collaborative interaction by making transparent the platform, methodology, instruments and code accessible for team members with less technological expertise, as well as developers aspiring to use interactive 3D media to promote further experimentation and conceptual discussions.