A collaborative game to study presence and situational awareness in a physical and an augmented reality environment

While augmented reality research has grown into a mature field over the last years, the aspects of situational awareness and presence of augmented reality (AR) are still quite open research topics. This paper introduces a collaborative game to explore the different perception of situational awareness and presence in a physical and an AR environment. The game is employed as an approximation of collaboratively solving complex problems. The goal of the game is to jointly build a tower with either physical blocks in a physical environment or virtual blocks in an augmented reality environment. A first study with 18 users shows the feasibility of the game and questionnaire design for studying the different perception of situational awareness and presence in a physical and an AR environment. The study further identifies necessary future research with regard to the perception of presence and awareness in AR.