CrossAtlas: Evaluating Projection Techniques for Spatial Referencing in Cross-Reality Collaboration
2026-07-30 • Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied how people working together in virtual spaces see and talk about objects when using different ways to show 3D layouts on a flat computer screen. They created a system called CrossAtlas that lets users switch between several projection methods to display these 3D scenes in 2D or VR views. In their tests with pairs of participants, the authors found that the way the 3D space was projected significantly affected how well people collaborated. Specifically, using a spherical projection method helped people work together better and was effective across different kinds of layouts. This research helps understand how to improve communication in mixed reality workspaces.
Cross-reality collaborationSpatial referencingBidirectional projectionPlanar projectionSpherical projectionEquirectangular projectionVirtual reality (VR)2D-3D mappingCollaborative workspace
Authors
Haoyang Yang, Chenyang Zhang, Elliott H. Faa, Weijian Liu, Lily Seika Chisholm, Benjamin Lee, David Saffo, Feiyu Lu, Blair MacIntyre, Yalong Yang
Abstract
Cross-reality collaboration increasingly connects immersive and desktop users within synchronized workspaces, yet little is known about how bidirectional projection techniques between immersive 3D layouts and desktop 2D views influence communication. Spatial referencing depends on shared spatial understanding, but different mappings preserve and distort geometric relationships in different ways, altering perceived adjacency, orientation, and coverage across collaborators' views. We present CrossAtlas, a synchronized PC-VR collaboration platform that integrates multiple bidirectional projection techniques, including three planar projection variants and equirectangular, a spherical projection variant, across layouts of varying curvature. In a controlled study with 24 dyads, collaborators completed spatial referencing tasks under different projection-layout conditions while we collected performance and subjective measures. Our results show that projection choice strongly shaped collaboration, with the spherical variant often outperforming planar projections and remaining robust across object layouts.