On extending collaboration in virtual reality environments

This paper reports on the development of a new VR (Virtual Reality) system with the world's largest hemispherical screen, which can display high immersive, life-size scale, stereoscopic images. A cluster of PCs is used in master-slave architecture, with 18 slave PCs for rendering left eye and right eye images, and the master for synchronizing the images for stereo view. Contents can be shared with a VR system operating on a notebook with a new VR system developed as part of the same VR toolkit. We apply the system to a real, collaborative architectural design project.

Virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) are increasingly being used in various business scenarios and are important driving forces in technology development. However the usage of these technologies in the home environment is restricted due to several factors including lack of low-cost (from the client point of view) highperformance solutions. In this paper we present a general client/server rendering architecture based on Real-Time concepts, including support for a wide range of client platforms and applications. The idea of focusing on the real-time behaviour of all components involved in distributed IP-based VR scenarios is new and has not been addressed before, except for simple sub-solutions. This is considered as "the most significant problem with the IP environment" [1]. Thus, the most important contribution of this research will be the holistic approach, in which networking, end-systems and rendering aspects are integrated into a cost-effective infrastructure for building distributed real-time VR applications on IP-based networks.

2019

Despite various collaborative software that supports expressing ideas, people still largely prefer physical notebooks or whiteboards. The reason is that they provide free-form expressions, co-presence of all participants and easy collaboration. However, when working with remote participants, people often choose the convenience of video conferencing, perhaps with screen sharing. We propose CollaboVR, an open-source reconfigurable framework for distributed and co-located multi-user communication in Virtual Reality. We tested CollaboVR with an application that lets participants create freehand drawings and 3D objects, while allowing participants to adjust two key variables: (1) User arrangement (participants adjust the location of their views of other participants) and (2) Input orientation (participants adjust the input to be vertical or horizontal). Preliminary user studies show that CollaboVR is a useful collaborative tool. Users report that some user arrangements and input orientat...

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005

2002

Today the development of network-based virtual communities and the use of avatars have brought a new level of complexity to the meaning of virtuality, providing the technology for remote presence and collaborative experiences. In this project the intention was to pursue this articulated vision of VR in order to assist the design profession during the early stages of the design process. The objective was to provide a tool that is capable of creating 3D shapes in a shared VR environment, thus allowing thedesign and its evolution to be shared. The use of the Java programming language was a natural choice for this project. Because of Java’s performance scalability and hardware independence the concept ofCAAD has been extended, making it possible to create a VR environment that can co-exist between high-end supercomputers and standard PCs. The project is currently being tested using PCs and an SGI system running a Reality Centre. The research reported in this paper describes the architec...

2020 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2020

Writing or sketching on whiteboards is an essential part of collaborative discussions in business meetings, reading groups, design sessions, and interviews. However, prior work in collaborative virtual reality (VR) systems has rarely explored the design space of multi-user layouts and interaction modes with virtual whiteboards. In this paper, we present CollaboVR, a reconfigurable framework for both co-located and geographically dispersed multi-user communication in VR. Our system unleashes users’ creativity by sharing freehand drawings, converting 2D sketches into 3D models, and generating procedural animations in real-time. To minimize the computational expense for VR clients, we leverage a cloud architecture in which the computational expensive application (Chalktalk) is hosted directly on the servers, with results being simultaneously streamed to clients. We have explored three custom layouts – integrated, mirrored, and projective – to reduce visual clutter, increase eye contact...

Future Generation Computer Systems, 1998

The VEplatform project aims at the development of a scaleable system which allows distributed virtual reality applications to be built. The system is decentralised, i.e. there is no central component which controls it and which can become a bottleneck. Entities of a virtual environment are represented by processes which are distributed over a network of computers. As a human participant (or "viewer") is also regarded as an entity there is no need to treat it separatly and therefore the system retains a simple structure. In this paper the working principles of the VEplatform system and its performance are discussed. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.

This paper describes our communication platform over which a 3D CVE (Collaborative Virtual Environment) called SPIN-3D is built. With our 3D interface, a small group of people operates simultaneously on 3D objects described with the VRML format. Multi-user is supported through a VRML extension. We propose to share some data of the scene tree as well as an easy way to implement this solution: each shared data communicates with its remote copies through a multicast CORBA technology for discrete actions and through multicast real-time streams for animations.

Virtual Reality, 1996

The aims of this paper are twofold. First, it identifies the general requirements of future large-scale distributed virtual reality (VR) systems based on an analysis of current VR systems, of more general distributed systems platforms and a consideration of the key issues of scale and heterogeneity. These requirements subsequently reform the development of a general VR reference architecture; and a framework which identifies the key software components which will comprise future distributed VR systems. Second, it uses this reference architecture as a vehicle tbr conducting a broad review of current distributed VR products and research prototypes. The review covers twelve well known VR systems and is intended as a general resource for researchers entering the field. These systems are: AVIARY, BrickNet, DIVE, dVS, MASSIVE, the MR Toolkit, NPSNET, Superscape, VEOS, VUE, WAVES and WorldToolkit. The review also identifies relevant standards in the areas of computer graphics and distributed systems. The paper finishes by drawing out a number of more general conclusions from the review including the urgent need to conduct research into the subjects of security and resource discovery for distributed VR systems. 1 9 Cooperation -VR offers great potential as a communication tool. Systems to support cooperative work, especially over wide-area networks, necessarily require distribution. There is also the need to make virtual worlds and their associated resources (e.g. libraries of objects) shareable over wide-area networks. Hence, we see a growing interest in VR systems which are publicly accessible using personal computing platforms (e.g. the use of the emerging VRML standard to enable public access to 3-D scene descriptions stored on the World Wide Web).

Communications of the ACM, 2001

We present extensions to research done at UNC in 3D object warping for collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). 3D objects are dynamically distorted in various ways to give visual cues to the users of a CVE about the actions that are being applied to the objects. Some warps occur with single-user actions; others happen when several users interact with one object collaboratively. We generalize the object warping methods to define 3D user interface techniques we generically call 3D sliders, meaning 3D objects that can be used to inject control information into programs. Unlike sliders in 1D, where the graphical image presents an analog to a physical control, we generalized the notion in both dimensions and in format/style. We do 3D sliders by warping the original object shapes, allowing their forms to retain their original representational value as well. The result is more than 3 degrees of control freedom in 3-space.

2004

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are distributed virtual reality systems that allow multiple geographically distant users to communicate with each other and interact with virtual objects in a shared virtual world. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the development and use of CVEs. The design analysis of CVE systems reveals several critical technical issues: managing consistent distributed information, controlling access to objects by multiple users, supporting large number of users, handling new users joining an existing shared environment, and representing users to each other in the environment appropriately. As a result, various CVE systems have been developed to address these issues. Most existing systems are either focused on specific collaboration features or customized to particular range of target applications, which constrains the flexibility of the system architecture to support a wider range of applications and limits its extensibility to respond to new requirements. This document presents a design framework that addresses all of these major issues associated with CVE design and implementation, and a flexible open prototype implementation of this framework that explicitly exposes each of them, making evaluation of the effects of specific issues on overall system performance possible. A systematic approach to evaluation of whole system is proposed and applied through a focus on internal system characterization and a focus on the external effects of specific issues on system performance. The experimental results showed that the prototype system provides efficient performance for collaborative applications with respect to the requirements considered in the experiments. The evaluation of our prototype implementation shows that our approach is feasible, and can be applied for the evaluation of other instances of issues.

In this paper we present our Networked Virtual Environment (NVE) System, called W-VLNET (Windows Virtual Life Network), which has been developed on the Windows NT Operating System (OS). This paper emphasizes the Real-Time aspect of this NVE system, the advanced interactivity that the system provides and its ability to transfer data across the Internet so that geographically distant users can collaborate with each other. Techniques for communication, scene management, facial and body animation, and general user interaction modules are detailed in this paper. The use of VRML97 and MPEG4 SHNC is overviewed to stress the compatibility of the system with other similar Virtual Reality systems. The software provides realistic virtual actors as well as sets of applicable high-level actions in real-time. Related issues on obtaining actor models and animating them in realtime are presented. We also introduce a case study to show an example of how the system can be used.

Proceedings of the fourth symposium on Virtual reality …, 1999

VRML is a file format for the description of dynamic scene graphs containing 3D objects with their visual appearance, multimedia content, an event model, and scripting capabilities. It is designed to be used on the Internet and on local system and to be used as an exchange file format. Although equipped with sophisticated techniques for user interaction the current VRML standard still lacks direct support for sharing virtual worlds that can not only be visited but also manipulated by multiple users distributed over the network. Several multi-user technologies have been developed in the past and some use VRML as the rendering and interaction vehicle. This paper gives a short review of design considerations for distributed virtual environments and approaches taken so far in the development of multi-user technologies. We present the design and implementation of VIRTUS, a multi-user platform that allows multiple geographically separated users to enter and manipulate shared VRML scenes.

2001

This paper proposes a framework that provides the architect with a tool that uses Virtual Reality (VR) as part of the design path. It offers the possibility to deploy a system capable of assisting the design profession during the early stages of the design process. This way VR becomes the means for a new experience where the architect can, free from constraints of the 2D world, create and manipulate the space she/he is designing. The idea upon which JCAD-VR is being built is that all the users present in the virtual world have to be able to share the same virtual environment in a “transparent fashion” where the user interface, instead of the traditional menu/windows based layout, it is part of the virtual world itself. The aim is to provide the designer with a tool for creating 3D-shapes in a shared VR environment, thus allowing the design to be shared as it evolves.

Collaborative Virtual Environments, 1996

In this paper we will give a short overview of the areas where VRML —the Virtual Reality Modelling Lan- guage— has to be extended in order to support collaborative virtual environments on the Internet. We will present extensions which allow an adequate representation of the individual participant within the virtual world. We will show how our approach supports shared interactions