Collaborative Virtual Environments: Digital Places and Spaces for Interaction

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.

1 Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs): Histories, Perspectives and Issues.- 1 Collaborative Virtual Environments: Digital Spaces and Places for CSCW: An Introduction.- 1.1 Introduction.- 1.2 Collaborative Virtual Environments: Some Considerations.- 1.3 Themes Covered in the Book.- 1.4 Summary.- 2 Technical Issues and System Challenges.- 2 Extending the Limits of Collaborative Virtual Environments.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Support for Awareness of Other People.- 2.3 Support for Multiple Media.- 2.4 Support for Scalability.- 2.5 Summary and Conclusion.- 3 System Challenges for Collaborative Virtual Environments.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Collaborative Virtual Environments.- 3.3 Structures for Modelling VEs.- 3.4 Conclusion.- 4 Understanding the Network Requirements of Collaborative Virtual Environments.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 User Behaviour.- 4.3 Process Behaviour.- 4.4 Distribution Architecture.- 4.5 Communication Protocol.- 4.6 Network Topology.- 4.7 Conclusions.- 3 Bodies, Presences and Interactions.- 5 “He’s Behind You”: The Experience of Presence in Shared Virtual Environments.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 The Ethnographic Study.- 5.3 Presence in Electronic Environments.- 5.4 Supporting Presence through Inter subjectivity and Learnability.- 5.5 Developing Engagement Properties.- 5.6 Summary and Conclusions.- 6 All That Is Solid Melts Into Software.- 6.1 Collaborative Virtual Environments Using Symbolic Acting.- 6.2 Symbolic Acting in Action.- 6.3 Results and Re-Design.- 6.4 Conclusions and Future Work.- 7 Virtually Missing the Point: Configuring CVEs for Object-Focused Interaction.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 Objects, Interaction and VR.- 7.3 Approach.- 7.4 Furniture World: An Initial Investigation.- 7.5 Duplication World: Extending Actions and Views.- 7.6 Discussion.- 4 Sharing Context in CVEs - Or “I Know What I See, But What Do You See?”.- 8 How Not To Be Objective.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Populated Information Terrains.- 8.3 Subjectivity.- 8.4 Creating a Subjective Environment.- 8.5 A Subjective Application.- 8.6 Discussion.- 8.7 Summary.- 9 Supporting Flexible Roles in a Shared Space.- 9.1 Introduction.- 9.2 Kansas.- 9.3 Two Examples.- 9.4 Awareness and WYSIWITYS.- 9.5 Capabilities in the User Interface.- 9.6 User Interfaces to Dynamic Capability Acquisition.- 9.7 Conclusions.- 5 So, Now We’re In A CVE, What Do We Do?.- 10 Designing Interactive Collaborative Environments.- 10.1 Introduction.- 10.2 Electronic Landscapes - The Web Planetarium.- 10.3 A 3D Collaborative Storytelling Tool: From Blob to Klump.- 10.4 Supervisory Robot Control and Mixed Reality.- 10.5 Potential Techniques for Spatial Interaction in Multi-User Surround Display Environments.- 10.6 Summary and Conclusions.- 11 Designing to Support Collaborative Scientific Research Across Distances: The nanoManipulator Environment.- 11.1 Introduction.- 11.2 The Scientific Research Context.- 11.3 Design to Support Collaborative Cognitive Work Across Distances.- 11.4 Design Verification and Refinement: Guidance from Social Awareness Literature.- 11.5 Evaluation.- 11.6 Conclusion.- 12 Tele-Immersive Collaboration in the CAVE Research Network.- 12.1 Introduction.- 12.2 Tele-Immersion.- 12.3 Current Applications.- 12.4 Lessons Learned.- 12.5 New Challenges.- 12.6 Summary.- 6 The Emerging and Existing Cultures of CVE Communities.- 13 Designing an Emergent Culture of Negotiation in Collaborative Virtual Communities: The DomeCityMOO Simulation.- 13.1 Introduction.- 13.2 Communication in Virtual Spaces.- 13.3 Culture and Collaborative Virtual Community Design.- 13.4 The DomeCityMOO.- 13.5 Power Negotiation and Collaboration in DomeCityMOO.- 13.6 Conclusions.- 13.7 Lessons Learned for CVE Designers About Emergent Culture and Negotiation.- 13.8 Next Steps for Culture and Collaborative Virtual Community Design.- 14 Waterfall Glen: Social Virtual Reality at Work.- 14.1 Introduction.- 14.2 The Waterfall Glen Project.- 14.3 Observations.- 14.4 Summary.- 15 The Role of the Personal in Social Workspaces: Reflections on Working in AlphaWorld.- 15.1 Introduction.- 15.2 The AlphaWorld Virtual Office.- 15.3 Beyond Encounters.- 15.4 Conclusions.- References.