Adding immersion to collaborative tools

While three dimensional collaborative environments have been used for industrial design or interactive games, workgroup collaboration has largely remained in the two-dimensional realm. In this paper, we examine the collaborative capabilities of the Collaborative Virtual Workspace, and how it is used. We then describe our effort to augment this system with an immersive display. By developing an immersive interface to an existing collaboration tool rather than adding collaboration to an immersive world, we hope to discover the advantages and pitfalls that immersive collaboration environments might offer. The first step in this process is to design the immersive environment to provide natural interactions for the activities users normally perform while working within the collaborative environment.