CollaVRation: An Immersive Virtual Environment for Collaborative Software Development

The increasing complexity of the software systems currently developed also increases the need for collaboration between multiple developers. In this paper, we propose and describe a collaborative environment in virtual reality with advanced features like live programming, UML class diagram visualization, and round-trip engineering. We conducted a user study that focuses on evaluating the use of VR in collaboration and aims to confirm whether such an approach is more effective compared to classical approaches when performing programming tasks. We evaluated two collaboration styles: a tutor-student approach that is common in academia and collaborative programming typical for pair programming in practice. The results showed that the proposed collaborative virtual reality environment was more attractive, stimulating, and novel than traditional approaches.