Social Viewing in Cinematic Virtual Reality: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR) has been increasing in popularity in the last years. However, viewers can feel isolated when watching 360° movies with a Head-Mounted Display. Since watching movies is a social experience for most people, we investigate if the use of Head Mounted Displays is appropriate for enabling shared CVR experiences. In this context, even if viewers are watch-ing the movie simultaneously, they do not automatically see the same field of view, since they can freely choose the viewing direction. Our goal is to explore interaction and guiding techniques to efficiently support social viewing and to improve social movie experiences. Based on the literature and experiences from past user studies, we identify seven challenges that need to be addressed in this situation, e.g. sharing the viewport or enabling social awareness. To address these challenges, we present and discuss design ideas for a CVR social movie player and highlight directions for future work.