Interacting in distributed collaborative virtual environments

Virtual reality toolkits and systems for computer supported cooperative work are often treated separately. However, combining them offers new possibilities for remote cooperative (or collaborative) group working. We review existing distribution models of virtual environments and propose a new method of concurrent interaction management. We examine the different types of communication layers, which are needed by collaborative virtual reality (VR) applications to achieve complex user interaction. Finally we propose a model for handling the different requirements of such applications, depending on the connection strategies used within a distributed VR system.

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