A social metaphor-based 3D virtual environment

ABSTRACT

Our design goal for OnLive Traveler was to develop a virtual community system that emulates natural social paradigms, allowing the participants to sense a tele-presence, the subjective sensation that remote users are actually co-located within a virtual space. Once this level of immersive "sense of presence" and engagement is achieved, we believe an enhanced level of socialization, learning, and communication are achievable.OnLive Traveler is a client-server application allowing realtime synchronous communication between individuals over the Internet. The Traveler client interface presents the user with a shared virtual 3D world, in which participants are represented by avatars. The primary mode of communication is through multi-point, full duplex voice, managed by the server.We examine a number of very specific design and implementation decisions that were made to achieve this goal within platform constraints. We also will detail some observed results gleaned from the virtual community and virtual learning user-base, which has been using Traveler for several years.

REFERENCES

• 1: Steve DiPaola , David Collins, A 3D natural emulation design approach to virtual communities, ACM SIGGRAPH 99 Conference abstracts and applications, p.208, August 08-13, 1999, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/311625.312022]
• 2: Bruce Damer , Jeremy Judson , Jackie Dove , Steve DiPaola , Ali Ebtekar , Stasia McGehee , Richard Walker , Kate Reber, Avatars!; Exploring and Building Virtual Worlds on the Internet, Peachpit Press, Berkeley, CA, 1997
• 3: Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000
• 4: Damer, B., S. Gold, J. de Bruin, D-J. de Bruin.. "Steps toward Learning in Virtual World Cyberspace: TheU Virtual University and BOWorld." In Interactions in Virtual Worlds.: A. Nijholt, O. A. Donk, E. M. A. G. van Dijk (eds.): University Twente, Enschede, 31--43. 1999

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
avatars, group communications, virtual environments