Telecollaboration - VRAPP (Virtual Reality Application)

Shared Virtual Environment

Project Overview

The shared virtual reality application VRAPP provides the central framework for our telecollaboration infrastructure. The software operates over the Center's T1-based communications link, communicating video, audio, and state between sites. Using VRAPP, remote participants can join together in a virtual conference room within which they can see and interact with multiple merged representations of a design in the shared space, together with other participants represented by avatars. The ultimate goal of VRAPP is to provide a shared environment to support multidisciplinary collaborative design.

The avatar motion in the virtual conference room follows each participant's location and orientation, which is controlled by the participant via a mouse or a tracked display device such as a HMD. In addition, when possible we superimpose live video of participants on their avatars.

VRAPP can be used in a variety of environments from non-immersive (desktop) to semi-immersive (Active Desk, a table-size stereo display with head tracking), to fully immersive (BOOM and HMD). This approach lets VRAPP take advantage of each type of environment without impacting the others.


Center Sites

Brown, UNC, Utah

Lead Researchers

Loring Holden
Russ Fish
Henry Fuchs

Bibliographic References

[CONN97a]D. Brookshire Conner, M. Cutts, R. Fish, H. Fuchs, L. Holden, M. Jacobs, B. Loss, L. Markosian, R. Riesenfeld, and G. Turk, "An Immersive Tool for Wide-Area Collaborative Design," TeamCAD, the First Graphics, Visualization and Usability (GVU) Workshop on Collaborative Design (Atlanta, Georgia, May 12-13, 1997)

[CONN97b]D. Brookshire Conner and Loring S. Holden, "Providing a Low-Latency User Experience in a High-Latency Application," Proceedings of 1997 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics (Providence, Rhode Island, April 27-30, 1997), pp. 45-48

Telecollaboration Bibliography

Full Research Bibliography

Web References

Telecollaborative Environments

Telecollaboration Overview
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