Interaction of objects in a virtual environment: a two-point paradigm

Virtual environments are computer-generated environments with computer-generated objects. These objects will, in general, have interactions. Thus the construction and editing of virtual environments will involve the specification of interactions. This paper presents a way of viewing interactions, the two-point paradigm, which permits the user to view and edit interactions between pairs of objects in real time from within the environment. The two-point paradigm naturally suggests data structures for objects, interaction definition, and the actual interactions in the environment. These data structures are described, and a simple editor based on them is suggested.