CVE

My blogs:

Interactive Multimedia Technology
http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com

Technology Supported Human-World Interaction
http://tshwi.blogspot.com

TechPsych
http://techpsych.blogspot.com

This Emerging Technology Trends article takes a look at some collaborative virtual environments like the Virtual Dollhouse. From the article: "Engineers have been using collaborating tools in virtual reality environments for almost 20 years. Now, South Korean and Japanese researchers have tried to compare different experiences of users working together using the Virtual Dollhouse application where two people working together have to build a virtual dollhouse using virtual building blocks, a hammer, and nails. Some of them were in ‘traditional’ collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) using haptic technologies. Others were working over the Internet as well as over a local area network. They’ve concluded that users could still work together effectively over a network. But read more…

This David Orban's Blog post reports researchers at the Laboratory of Eidomatics at University of Milan, in cooperation with Eximia have developed a new immersive interface for visualizing Second Life environments and interacting with them. From the post: "Real 2nd Life an integrated system composed of a semi-circular screen, of almost 3 meters high, and 7 meters of diameter. The image of the live Second Life grid is spread on the screen through the use of four high luminosity Barco projectors, fed by multi-headed Matrox graphics cards, inserted in standard PCs running a specially recompiled Second Life client which introduces a stereoscopic image doubling calculating the depth of the image in real time.

This washingtonpost.com article takes a look at a Second Life lawsuit concerning six virtual merchants who are suing Thomas Simon of Queens, N.Y., for an undisclosed amount of money, claiming he stole the computer code for products they sell in their virtual stores. From the article: "Like the next installment of Terminator, we all knew this day was coming: the first-ever Second Life lawsuit. Sure, it involves people who aren't real stealing products that aren't real, in a virtual world that barely resembles our own. Still, this is America! Since when has reality been required for legal action?

A virtual character, or avatar, for all the virtual worlds in which people play is the goal of a joint project between IBM and Linden Lab.

Read more at:

BBC News

This Clickable Culture post takes a look at the Unype application that welds multi-user capability onto Google Earth, including 3D avatars and a Skype-powered contacts-list. From the article: "Developed by Holoscape, the Unype client software (currently in beta) connects Google Earth, Skype, and an Unype Server, where other Unype users are logged. Users select their own COLLADA-format avatar models to use in the system, as well as public profile information such as a URL and photo.

"MACVE: A Mobile Agent Based Framework for Large-Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments"
Liang Zhang, Qingping Lin
Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, June 2007, Vol. 16, No. 3, Pages 279-292.

The Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) is a promising technology which provides an online shared virtual world for geographically dispersed people to interact with each other. However, the scalability of existing CVE systems is limited due to the constraints in processing power and network speed of each participating host. In this paper, a mobile agent based framework for large-scale CVE, MACVE, is proposed to support a large number of concurrent participants in a CVE with a large amount of evolving virtual entities. In MACVE, the CVE system is decomposed into a group of collaborative mobile agents, each of which is responsible for an independent system task. These agents can migrate or clone dynamically at any suitable participating host including traditional servers and qualified user hosts to avoid the potential bottleneck, which can improve the scalability of CVE. Our prototype system has demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed framework.

This NAFEMS post reports a major European project has been announced to enable engineers in the aerospace, automotive and construction industries across the globe to interact using virtual reality technology. From the post: "Led by the University of Salford, partners in the €12m European Commission project met at the University last week to discuss the development of future collaborative workspaces which will allow engineers from different countries to meet and work as a team in cyberspace to design automotives, aeroplanes and buildings.