Design of an Extended Reality Collaboration Architecture for Mixed Immersive and Multi-surface Interaction.

EXtended Reality (XR) is a rapidly developing paradigm for computer entertainment, and is also increasingly used for simulation, training, data analysis, and other non-entertainment purposes, often employing head-worn XR devices like the Microsoft HoloLens. In XR, integration with the physical world should also include integration with commonly used digital devices. This paper proposes an architecture to integrate head-worn displays with touchscreen devices, such as phones, tablets, or large tabletop or wall displays. The architecture emerged through the iterative development of a prototype for collaborative analysis and decision-making for the maritime domain. However, our architecture can flexibly support a range of domains and purposes. XR designers, XR entertainment researchers, and game developers can benefit from our architecture to propose new ways of gaming, considering multiple devices as user interfaces in an immersive collaborative environment.