Tele-sports and tele-dance: full-body network interaction

Researchers have had great success using motion capture tools for controlling avatars in virtual worlds. Another current of virtual reality research has focused on building collaborative environments connected by networks. The present paper combines these tendencies to describe an open source software system that uses motion capture tools as input devices for realtime collaborative virtual environments. Important applications of our system lie in the realm of simulating interactive, multiparticipant physical activities like sport and dance. Several challenges and their respective solutions are outlined. First, we describe the infrastructure necessary to handle full-body articulated avatars as driven by motion capture equipment, including calibration and avatar creation. Next, we outline the PC cluster solution chosen to render our worlds, exploring methods of data sharing and synchronization, both within the PC cluster nodes and between different sites in the distributed system. Finally, virtual sports require physics, and we describe the simulation algorithms used.

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