L-WiM: Collaborative Visualization in Immersive Environments

The collaborative exploration of data, facilitated by head-mounted displays (HMDs) in an immersive environment, enables multiple users to engage in shared activities. A profound understanding of collaborators' activities is vital for effectively navigating the immersive environment, including awareness of their presence, location, and ties due to the abundance of information distributed across different magnitudes. Consequently, observing the contextual situations of others and efficiently sharing insights becomes challenging due to spatial separation or divergent scales of collaborators' avatars, In this work, we propose World-in-Miniature (WiM) to visualize the virtual environment at each user's level. Building upon this, we introduce linked-WiM (L-WiM), a novel interactive user interface for collaborative astronomical data exploration that connects multiple WiMs. Through L-WiM, users gain a comprehensive overview of their contextual information, such as scales, spatial locations, view directions and the surrounding environment. Additionally. L-WiM supports communication through voice messages and visual cues once users select other users' WiMs. This research enhances the collaborative exploration of astronomical data by providing an intuitive interface that promotes effective understanding and efficient sharing of insights among collaborators.