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Immersive Coding: A Virtual and Mixed Reality Environment for Programmers

Authors:
Roy Oberhauser

Keywords: mixed reality; virtual reality; programming; software engineering; software visualization

Abstract:
While virtual reality (VR) has been applied to various domains to provide new visualization capabilities, the leveraging of VR capabilities for programmers doing software development or maintenance has not been sufficiently explored. In this paper, we present a VR environment for programmers called MR-FTC (mixed-reality FlyThruCode) providing software code structure visualization in multiple metaphors with integrated real keyboard/mouse viewing and interaction in mixed reality (MR) to enable basic programming task support without leaving the VR environment. A prototype implementation is described, with a case study demonstrating its feasibility and initial empirical evaluation results showing its potential. This MR solution concept enables programmers to benefit from VR visualization while supporting their more natural keyboard interaction for basic code-centric tasks. This can support programmers in exploring, understanding, and directly interacting with and maintaining program code while leveraging new VR paradigms and capabilities.

Pages: 250 to 255

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2017

Publication date: October 8, 2017

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-590-6

Location: Athens, Greece

Dates: from October 8, 2017 to October 12, 2017