Issues In Large Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) are virtual reality spaces that enable participants to collaborate and share objects, as if physically present in the same place. CVE concepts have been used in many systems in the past few years. Applications of such technology range from military combat simulations to various civilian commercial applications. These collaboration spaces have strict performance requirements. Today, there are many such systems developed specifically for collaboration. At the same time, some relatively new standards that address multiuser virtual environments and shared spaces have become available; however, most of these standards have been developed assuming that a small number of users would be interacting at a given time. The architectures available today provide support for a modest number of users but they fail if too many users are "present" together in a small "space" in the Virtual World. In this work, we first evaluate the currently available standards for the case of a very large number of users. An Adaptive Hybrid Architecture for VEry Large Virtual EnvironmenTs (VELVET) is then introduced. VELVET allows a large number of users to interact in a CVE. It also supports small groups of users, but it is in the large environment case that shows its greatest potential. VELVET introduces a novel adaptive area of interest management, which supports heterogeneity amongst the various participants. That allows users in a supercomputer with a high-speed networking connection to successfully collaborate with others in not-so-powerful systems behind a slow dial-up connection. In order to make a Collaborative Virtual Environment more interesting to users, it is possible to "stitch" together copies of areas which users may have interest in from one Virtual World into another. This procedure augments the physical size of a Virtual World, and creates a potentially larger number of users within the World, first because of the "embedding" and second since the added attractions may work as an incentive for some more users to join the "embedded" World. On the other hand this procedure brings up a series of problems related with consistency, which are also addressed in the thesis. We introduce a methodology which ensures that all copies of a given area of a World are kept consistent among them, as well as with the original world. We also apply this methodology in VELVET, as well as in other Architectures. Additionally, we introduce other approaches to be used when a less strict consistency model is sufficient.

Collaborative virtual environments are multi-user virtual realities which actively support communication and co-operation. This book addresses the theory, design, realisation and evaluation of such systems, with a particular emphasis on support for large numbers of distributed users. A broad approach is taken, which ranges from the sociology of interpersonal communication to the management of communication in distributed systems. The emphasis on multi-user environments distinguishes this book from the many general books on virtual reality which only deal with single-user systems. This book presents: models of multi-party awareness and interaction in space-based systems; detailed designs of two prototypes (MASSIVE-1 and MASSIVE-2); experiences with collaborative virtual environments created using these; and analyses of the corresponding network requirements. Many of these results and ideas are applicable to other systems and approaches.

Collaborative virtual environments are multi-user virtual realities which actively support communication and co-operation. This book addresses the theory, design, realisation and evaluation of such systems, with a particular emphasis on support for large numbers of distributed users. A broad approach is taken, which ranges from the sociology of interpersonal communication to the management of communication in distributed systems. The emphasis on multi-user environments distinguishes this book from the many general books on virtual reality which only deal with single-user systems. This book presents: models of multi-party awareness and interaction in space-based systems; detailed designs of two prototypes (MASSIVE-1 and MASSIVE-2); experiences with collaborative virtual environments created using these; and analyses of the corresponding network requirements. Many of these results and ideas are applicable to other systems and approaches.

Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) are multi-user virtual realities which actively support communication and co-operation. This book offers a comprehensive reference volume to the state-of-the-art in the area of design studies in CVEs. It is an excellent mix of contributions from over 25 leading researcher/experts in multiple disciplines from academia and industry, providing up-to-date insight into the current research topics in this field as well as the latest technological advancements and the best working examples. Many of these results and ideas are also applicable to other areas such as CVE for design education. Overall, this book serves as an excellent reference for postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners who need a comprehensive approach to study the design behaviours in CVEs. It is also a useful and informative source of materials for those interested in learning more on using/developing CVEs to support design and design collaboration.

This is the refereed proceedings of the 24th Computer Graphics International Conference, CGI 2006. The 38 revised full papers and 37 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed. The papers are organized in topical sections on rendering and texture, efficient modeling and deformation, digital geometry processing, shape matching and shape analysis, face, virtual reality, motion and image, as well as CAGD.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of 12 workshops held at the 21st International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Euro-Par 2015, in Vienna, Austria, in August 2015. The 67 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 121 submissions. The volume includes papers from the following workshops: BigDataCloud: 4th Workshop on Big Data Management in Clouds - Euro-EDUPAR: First European Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education for Undergraduate Students - Hetero Par: 13th International Workshop on Algorithms, Models and Tools for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Platforms - LSDVE: Third Workshop on Large Scale Distributed Virtual Environments - OMHI: 4th International Workshop on On-chip Memory Hierarchies and Interconnects - PADAPS: Third Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Agent-Based Simulations - PELGA: Workshop on Performance Engineering for Large-Scale Graph Analytics - REPPAR: Second International Workshop on Reproducibility in Parallel Computing - Resilience: 8th Workshop on Resiliency in High Performance Computing in Clusters, Clouds, and Grids - ROME: Third Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for the Many Core Era - UCHPC: 8th Workshop on UnConventional High Performance Computing - and VHPC: 10th Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cloud Computing.

The design of various virtual environments should be based on the needs of a diverse population of users around the globe. Interface design should be user centric and should strive for making the user's interaction as simple, meaningful, and efficient as possible. User Interface Design for Virtual Environments: Challenges and Advances focuses on challenges that designers face in creating interfaces for users of various virtual environments. Chapters included in this book address various critical issues that have implications for user interface design from a number of different viewpoints. This book is written for professionals who want to improve their understanding of challenges associated with user interface design issues for globally-dispersed users in various virtual environments.

17 papers report on the latest scientific advances in the fields of immersive projection technology and virtual environments. The main topics included here are human computer interaction (user interfaces, interaction techniques), software developments (virtual environment applications, rendering techniques), and input/output devices.

A Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) is a distributed, virtual reality designed to support collaborative activities. It is a topic of increasing interest to large global corporations, where work teams are often distributed over a large geographic area. Aimed at anyone involved in researching the design of tools for supporting distributed teams of workers, it helps the reader understand the latest technology, state-of-the-art research, and good working practice. Among the topics covered are: systems aspects of CVEs; user centered aspects of environment design; and methodologies for iterative evaluation and design.