Finally a Case for Collaborative VR?: The Need to Design for Remote Multi-Party Conversations

Amid current social distancing measures requiring people to work from home, there has been renewed interest on how to effectively converse and collaborate remotely utilizing currently available technologies. On the surface, VR provides a perfect platform for effective remote communication. It can transfer contextual and environmental cues and facilitate a shared perspective while also allowing people to be virtually co-located. Yet we argue that currently VR is not adequately designed for such a communicative purpose. In this paper, we outline three key barriers to using VR for conversational activity : (1) variability of social immersion, (2) unclear user roles, and (3) the need for effective shared visual reference. Based on this outline, key design topics are discussed through a user experience design perspective for considerations in a future collaborative design framework

Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

Light on horizontal interactive surfaces: Input space for tabletop computing

In the last 25 years we have witnessed the rise and growth of interactive tabletop research, both in academic and in industrial settings. The rising demand for the digital support of human activities motivated the need to bring computational power to table surfaces. In this article, we review the state of the art of tabletop computing, highlighting core aspects that frame the input space of interactive tabletops: (a) developments in hardware technologies that have caused the proliferation of interactive horizontal surfaces and (b) issues related to new classes of interaction modalities (multitouch, tangible, and touchless). A classification is presented that aims to give a detailed view of the current development of this research area and define opportunities and challenges for novel touch- and gesture-based interactions between the human and the surrounding computational environment. © 2014 ACM.This work has been funded by Integra (Amper Sistemas and CDTI, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) and TIPEx (TIN2010-19859-C03-01) projects and Programa de Becas y Ayudas para la Realización de Estudios Oficiales de Máster y Doctorado en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 2010

Dimensioning mobile WiMAX in the access and core network : a case study

Existing broadband wireless technologies such as evolving 3G and WiFi have enjoyed widespread adoption but are far from offering the flexibility in deployment and high data rates. Mobile WiMAX, an emerging broadband wireless technology promises to bring a new experience to mobile broadband services by offering users high data rates and efficient network access techniques. This thesis work provides a technical description of mobile WiMAX and compares its technical capabilities with the existing technologies such as WiFi and 3G. The work continues further on dimensioning mobile WiMAX in the access and core network. In the access network, we determine the number of base stations required to cover a given metropolitan area, explore their configurations, and perform frequency selection. In the core network we dimension the interfaces, and nodes involved. From the study we will show that WiMAX provides the operator with the antenna configurations options of high capacities, large cell coverage area, and a wide selection of QoS classes. The study will also show that the data density requirements of customers, resulting from the capacity analysis are fulfilled by properly dimensioning the elements in the access and core network

Issues in a very large scale distributed virtual environment.

So, King-yan Oldfield.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-70).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Abstract --- p.iAcknowledgments --- p.iiChapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Evolution of Communication Technologies --- p.1Chapter 1.2 --- The Internet --- p.2Chapter 1.3 --- The Distributed Virtual Environments --- p.2Chapter 1.3.1 --- Features of DVE --- p.3Chapter 1.3.2 --- Current and Potential Applications --- p.4Chapter 1.3.3 --- The Challenges --- p.5Chapter 1.4 --- Our Contributions --- p.6Chapter 2 --- System Architecture --- p.7Chapter 2.1 --- The SSDVE and MSDVE Architectures --- p.7Chapter 2.2 --- Issues in the MSDVE Architecture --- p.8Chapter 2.2.1 --- On the Server Side --- p.8Chapter 2.2.2 --- On the Client Side --- p.8Chapter 3 --- Balancing Work Load and Reducing Inter-server Communication --- p.10Chapter 3.1 --- Problem Formulation --- p.10Chapter 3.1.1 --- The Area of Interest --- p.11Chapter 3.1.2 --- The DVE Cells --- p.11Chapter 3.1.3 --- Expected Number of Avatars --- p.12Chapter 3.1.4 --- Cost Metrics in Different Types of Network --- p.13Chapter 3.1.5 --- Problem Definition --- p.14Chapter 3.1.6 --- Complexity --- p.18Chapter 3.2 --- Partitioning Algorithms --- p.19Chapter 3.2.1 --- A Simplified Case --- p.19Chapter 3.2.2 --- The General Case --- p.19Chapter 3.3 --- Experiments --- p.22Chapter 4 --- Communication Sub-graph --- p.31Chapter 4.1 --- Problem Formulation --- p.31Chapter 4.1.1 --- Optimization Metrics --- p.32Chapter 4.1.2 --- Design Considerations --- p.32Chapter 4.2 --- Communication Sub-graph Construction Algorithms --- p.34Chapter 4.2.1 --- The Minimum Diameter Sub-graph (MDS) --- p.34Chapter 4.2.2 --- The Core-based Tree (CBT) --- p.37Chapter 4.2.3 --- The Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) --- p.40Chapter 5 --- Synchronization --- p.42Chapter 5.1 --- Synchronization in a DVE System --- p.43Chapter 5.2 --- System Model --- p.46Chapter 5.2.1 --- Problem Definition --- p.47Chapter 5.2.2 --- The Markov Chain Model --- p.47Chapter 5.2.3 --- Deciding the Threshold Φ --- p.49Chapter 5.3 --- Optimal Synchronizing Interval --- p.50Chapter 5.3.1 --- "An ""on-average"" Guarantee" --- p.50Chapter 5.3.2 --- A Stochastic Guarantee --- p.52Chapter 5.3.3 --- Finding p with T and Φ --- p.52Chapter 5.3.4 --- Searching for r*p --- p.54Chapter 5.4 --- Experiments --- p.55Chapter 5.4.1 --- Simulation Results --- p.55Chapter 5.4.2 --- Theoretical Results --- p.58Chapter 6 --- Related Work --- p.63Chapter 6.1 --- Load Balancing on DVE --- p.63Chapter 6.2 --- Object State Synchronization Techniques --- p.63Chapter 6.3 --- Group Communication and Multicasting --- p.64Chapter 6.4 --- DVE System Development Toolkits --- p.64Chapter 6.5 --- Example DVE Systems --- p.65Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.66Chapter 7.1 --- A Vision to the Future --- p.66Chapter 7.2 --- Conclusion --- p.66Bibliography --- p.6