Large Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments

✍ Scribed by Chris Greenhalgh BA, PhD (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag London
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 236
• Series: Distinguished Dissertations
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Collaborative virtual environments are multi-user virtual realities which actively support communication and co-operation. This book addresses the theory, design, realisation and evaluation of such systems, with a particular emphasis on support for large numbers of distributed users. A broad approach is taken, which ranges from the sociology of interpersonal communication to the management of communication in distributed systems. The emphasis on multi-user environments distinguishes this book from the many general books on virtual reality which only deal with single-user systems. This book presents: models of multi-party awareness and interaction in space-based systems; detailed designs of two prototypes (MASSIVE-1 and MASSIVE-2); experiences with collaborative virtual environments created using these; and analyses of the corresponding network requirements. Many of these results and ideas are applicable to other systems and approaches.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xvi
Introduction....Pages 1-15
CVEs: a Review....Pages 17-29
The Spatial Model of Interaction....Pages 31-39
MASSIVE-1....Pages 41-54
Direct Awareness....Pages 55-73
Spatial Trading....Pages 75-93
Third Party Objects....Pages 95-104
MASSIVE-2....Pages 105-122
Contextualised Awareness....Pages 123-140
Awareness Driven Communication....Pages 141-178
Conclusions....Pages 179-197
Back Matter....Pages 199-229

✦ Subjects

Computer Graphics; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction