Communication Portals: Immersive Communication for Everyday Life

Human-to-human communication is extremely important in everyday life. Video teleconferencing brings humans closer together over vast distances, but is still not as engaging as face-to-face communication. At the same time, basic virtual reality technology has finally achieved commodity status. In this paper, we present the concept of the "communication portal," a more immersive communication channel based on today's commodity VR technology. Communication portals will enhance our communication experience, bringing us closer to one another. We present an overview of technology for communication portals that is possible today. We present a prototype of a communication portal system based on fish tank virtual reality (FTVR) as our initial step toward the concept. Finally, we discuss the challenges and limitations arising from the prototype experience and outline future work.