Collaborative virtual environments: going beyond virtual reality

Abstract

With the growing demand for collaboration technologies, several CSCW (Compute-Supported Cooperative Work) systems have been developed. CVEs (Collaborative Virtual Environments) represent an important category of CSCW systems that generally make use of 3D shared space to provide collaboration facilities. However in most CVEs collaboration is restricted to the Virtual Reality context. In this paper it is proposed to extend CVEs through the integration of different collaboration tools in order to allow collaboration to take place in different contexts (e.g. Web browsing), in a parallel and coordinated way with the virtual scene.

CSCW Systems in Virtual Environments: A General Development Framework

“…Dai et al suggest a model that integrates the conference function of NetMeeting with VE capabilities using VRML [6], the proposal describe details of the software components, which are using COM as interface for the system integration. Gomes et al propose an integration framework for extended CVE with third party tool, the proposal core is "integration module" between CoLab, Platine and VNet, where CoLab allows collaborative capabilities, Platine provides communication tools (chat, audio and videoconference) and VNet is a free multi-user VRML system [5]. These proposals show systems architecture but do not include guidelines to design or to develop CVE.…”

“…Likewise, the sharing artifacts can be designed following metaphors near to reality; for example, it is possible see a team member doing a presentation in an environment similar to an office, or see how the avatar of a team member disappears when he/she is disconnected, among others [5]. On the other hand, many other mechanisms have been developed for improving the sensation of realism such as enveloping visualization devices, which increases the immersive sensation improving the mode as users are involved with the task [3]; visual tools for monitoring the work of the group and following sharing tasks, personalized detail views [4] and, more recently, haptic and multimodal interfaces [5].…”

“…On the other hand, many other mechanisms have been developed for improving the sensation of realism such as enveloping visualization devices, which increases the immersive sensation improving the mode as users are involved with the task [3]; visual tools for monitoring the work of the group and following sharing tasks, personalized detail views [4] and, more recently, haptic and multimodal interfaces [5].…”

“…Previous works have proposed software architectures for building of CVE [6], [5], [7], aiming its proposals to software and hardware components and intercommunication between these, leaving the side important issues as design of collaborative work, 3D interaction, sharing artifacts, among others. Other proposals have been centered in 3D interaction models in Virtual Environments (VE) [8], [9]; emphasized in the problems of 3D navigation, selection, manipulation and system control, and in the concepts of 3D awareness.…”