3D virtual environments have been successfully used in the computer games industry, product design development and military/industrial training. However, most of the existing systems have a supporting structure closely tight to the application. As a result, a change in the application usually means a change in the 3D VE supporting structure, making it difficult and expensive to develop and/or to extend VEs. The integration of nonlinear stories and VR is an interesting approach to building and extending 3D VEs when these are built as interactive stories, which can be changed either completely or partially. This paper presents a description language based on XML that is capable of expressing VEs through interactive non-linear stories. When this language is interpreted, it can favour the extension of VE applications, such as highly dynamic marketing campaigns to 3D virtual shops in the web, customized training courses, educational and entertainment games, etc.
3D virtual simulation environments (VE) applications have been impelled mainly by the computer games industry, military and industrial training and product design development. However, most of the existing systems are focused on specific tasks and have a supporting structure, which is closely tight to the application. As a consequence, a change in the application usually means a change in the supporting structure too, making it difficult and expensive to develop new or to extend existing VEs.In this paper, we present a novel approach to building and extending 3D virtual simulation environments through the integration of interactive non-linear stories and Virtual Reality. With this approach, VEs are composed as non-linear stories which can be changed either completely or partly, making it easier for developers to build and/or extend VEs applications, such as highly dynamic marketing campaigns to 3D virtual shops, customized training courses, educational and entertainment games, etc. Moreover, the use of a nonlinear story for building a VE application can also facilitate the communication among the different professionals involved in the building of complex VE applications.
The advances in automatic speech recognition have pushed the humancomputer interface researchers to adopt speech as one mean of input data. It is natural to humans, and complements very well other input interfaces. However, integrating an automatic speech recognizer into a complex system (such as a 3D visualization system or a Virtual Reality system) can be a difficult and time consuming task. In this paper we present our approach to the problem, a software framework requiring minimum additional coding from the application developer. The framework combines voice commands with existing interaction code, automating the task of creating a new speech grammar (to be used by the recognizer). A new listener component for the Xj3D was created, which makes transparent to the user the integration between the 3D browser and the recognizer. We believe this is a desirable feature for virtual reality system developers, and also to be used as a rapid prototyping tool when experimenting with speech technology.
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