InCom: Support System for Informal Communication in 3D Virtual Worlds Generated from HTML Documents

The importance of informal communication on the Internet has been increasing in recent years. Several systems for informal communication have been developed. These systems, however, require a particular server and/or specialized 3D contents. In this paper, we propose a system, named InCom, for informal communication in a 3D virtual environment. Browsers which are component of InCom generate 3D virtual worlds from existing common 2D HTML documents. Browsers communicate in a peer-to-peer manner. Using avatars makes gaze awareness smooth. Our results show that users shared interests by gaze awareness.