Social VR: A New medium for remote communication and collaboration

There is a growing need for effective remote communication, which has many positive societal impacts, such as reducing environmental pollution and travel costs, supporting rich collaboration by remotely connecting talented people. Social Virtual Reality (VR) invites multiple users to join a collaborative virtual environment, which creates new opportunities for remote communication. The goal of social VR is not to completely replicate reality, but to facilitate and extend the existing communication channels of the physical world. Apart from the benefits provided by social VR, privacy concerns and ethical risks are raised when the boundary between the real and the virtual world is blurred. This workshop is intended to spur discussions regarding technology, evaluation protocols, application areas, research ethics and legal regulations for social VR as an emerging immersive remote communication tool