Research in Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) is becoming more and more significant with increasing accessibility of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technology, additionally reinforced by the increasing demand for remote collaboration groupware. While the research is focusing on methods for synchronous remote collaboration, asynchronous remote collaboration remains a niche. Nevertheless, future CVEs should support both paradigms of collaborative work, since asynchronous collaboration has as well its benefits, for instance a more flexible time-coordination. In this paper we present a concept of recording and later playback of highly interactive collaborative tasks in Mixed Reality (MR). Furthermore, we apply the concept in an assembly training scenario from the manufacturing industry and test it during pilot user experiments. The pilot study compared two modalities, the first one with a manufacturing manual, and another using our concept and featuring a ghost avatar. First results revealed no significant differences between both modalities in terms of time completion, hand movements, cognitive workload and usability. Some differences were not expected, however, these results and the feedback brought by the participants provide insights to further develop our concept.

Digital transformation facilitates new methods for remote collaboration while shaping a new understanding of working together. In this chapter, we consider global collaboration in the context of digital transformation, discuss the role of Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) within the transformation process, present an overview of the state of CVEs and go into more detail on significant challenges in CVEs by providing recent approaches from research.

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