Shared Virtual Environments

Telepresence is the future of multimedia systems and will allow participants to share professional and private experiences, meetings, games, parties. The sense of "presence" in the virtual environment is an important requirement for collaborative activities involving multiple remote users working with social interactions. Using virtual humans within the shared environment is a essential supporting tool for presence. We will need in the future real-time realistic 3D avatars, but also interactive perceptive actors to populate the Virtual Worlds. Our main project in this area is the Virtual Life Network (VLNET), developed in cooperation with MIRALab. This system has been also used for a demonstration of Virtual Tennis between Geneva and Lausanne during Interactive Telecom 97. We also cooperate on Virtual Humans in other Collaborative Virtual Environments in the frame work of the COVEN project.

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