Virtual environment architectures: interoperability through software interconnection technology

Virtual reality (VR) is emerging as an important approach to the modeling and simulation of complex systems, but software technology for scientists to build VR-based applications fosters the development of closed applications, each built from scratch. A scientist's ability to merge models and systems, once developed, is solely dependent upon his ability to 'hack' software, since the principles of VR system interconnection are poorly understood and no software engineering guidelines have ever been developed for use in VR applications. We are studying the area of interoperation among VR systems (i.e. the virtual environment) in order to discover essential principles governing their construction and effective use. Our approach focuses upon the control properties of interfaces between VR applications: existing VR applications are being examined in order to expose commonalities, and our abstractions of VR control behavior are being specified in terms of the software bus model of interconnection. This paper presents our vision for virtual environment infrastructure, and describes the current state of our work in progress. There are several direct applications of our VE exploration to collaboration infrastructure. First, some of the VR systems we are using allow collaborative interactions of multiple users. Secondly, our investigations involve combining the Polylith software interconnection technology with Trellis, a multiuser collaborative hypermedia technology.<<ETX>>