Facial Communication in Networked Collaborative Virtual Environments

... Work, together with a wide interest for graphical systems and Virtual Environments, have in the recent years raised interest for research in the field of Networked Collaborative Virtual Environments (NCVEs). NCVEs are systems that allow multiple geographically distant users to share a common three-dimensional Virtual Environment (VE). NCVEs are a powerful tool for communication and collaboration, with potential applications ranging from entertainment and teleshopping to engineering and medicine. Therefore it is not surprising that in the recent years we have seen active research on this topic in both academic and industrial research establishments. One of th

Virtual Humans for Representing Participants in Immersive Virtual Environments

. The sense of presence requires that participants become part of the virtual environment and equipped with natural behaviors for interaction. This can be accomplished by representing the participants by a virtual human actor with realistic appearance and similar movements to the actual body. Current sensing devices are limited for tracking all joints of the complex human body, therefore the tracked information should be combined with motion generators and behavioral animation to interpolate the joints which are not tracked. In this paper, we explore the problems and solutions in including virtual humans in immersive virtual environments. Keywords: Virtual Actors, Virtual Life, Computer Animation, Networked Environments, Multimedia 1. Introduction Presence requires that the participant becomes part of the environment, and interacts with the environment using natural ways. It is expected that the degree of presence increases with increasing level of physical or social interaction, wit..

Integration of Avatars and Autonomous Virtual Humans in Networked Virtual Environments

In this paper, we survey problems and solutions for inserting virtual humans in Networked Virtual Environments. Using virtual humans as participant embodiment increases the collaboration in Networked Virtual Environments, as it provides a direct relationship between how we interact with the real world and the virtual world representation. We show the differences between avatars and autononous Virtual Humans in terms of motion control. 1 Introduction Trends towards networked applications and Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), together with a wide interest for graphical systems and Virtual Environments, have in the recent years raised interest for research in the field of Networked Virtual Environments (NVEs) [1]. NVEs are systems that allow multiple geographically distant users to interact in a common virtual environment. The users themselves are represented within the environment using a graphical embodiment. The user can evolve within the environment and interact wi..

Nonverbal communication interface for collaborative virtual environments

Using virtual humans as participant embodiment increases the collaboration in Networked Virtual Environments, as it provides a direct relationship between how we interact with the real world and the virtual world representation. Nonverbal communication is an important aspect in real-life collaboration, therefore the means allowing the users to replicate it should be provided in the virtual world. In this paper, we present our category of nonverbal communication actions based on the psycho-sociological theory, and provide a solution that balances between practical limitations of input devices and sociological aspects. We introduce our implementation using our VLNET (Virtual Life Network) networked virtual environment