Editorial

[No abstract available

Interaction between real and virtual humans in augmented reality

Interaction between real and virtual humans covers a wide range of topics from creation and animation of virtual actors to computer vision techniques for data acquisition from real world. We discuss the design and implementation of an augmented reality system which allows investigation of different real/virtual interaction aspects. As an example we present an application to create real time interactive drama with real and virtual actor

Hybrid participant embodiments in networked collaborative virtual environments

The authors present a novel approach to participant embodiment in networked collaborative virtual environments. The embodiment approach integrates live video into 3D objects for a hybrid participant representation. They implemented their ideas in a Networked Collaborative Virtual Environment system, VLNET and investigated network and rendering issues in comparison with virtual human participant embodiment. The paper presents two distinct case studies demonstrating their ideas. The first one is a tele-teaching application, in which they investigate a shared environment with virtual humans and hybrid embodiments. The second one presents a distributed augmented reality application, in which participants share a mixed environment with real and virtual element

Real-time interactions with virtual agents driven by human action identification

The authors evaluate a multi-level action recognition algorithm for behavioral interactions in inhabited virtual world

Multi-level modeling and recognition of human actions involving full body motion

A multi-level model of human actions involving full body motion is proposed. Actions are considered as the combination of action primitives at different levels: motions of the center of mass, end effectors, and final postures of the virtual skeleton. The model is especially designed for fast action recognition from the input of the human motion at the joint leve

The Representation and Navigation of Complex Data

In this paper we are attempting to address issues related to perception and consciousness deriving from the management of overwhelming data, utilizing artistic/design and sound production practices in virtual reality/environments. In the ordinary flow of day to day activities the self descriptive, self-reflexive, and recursive processes of data collection reveal themselves. These pairs are not encountered as binary oppositions in conflict, but in a continual management of data transformation. We converge with our own solutions “ and the development of technological tools “ and give birth to new scientific tools as well as intuitively artistically generated tools, literally and figuratively. A system prototype - “Vineta” - has been developed at the IPP allowing navigation through scientific and technical data without typing and revising keyword-based queries. The chosen approach to visualizing documents and terms in navigational retrieval includes the representation of documents and terms as graphical objects, and dynamic positioning of these objects in a 3-dimensional virtual navigation space. Users can navigate through this virtual space examining individual documents and clusters of documents at various levels of detail