YABLE—yet another behaviour language

ABSTRACT

There is an increasing use of virtual environments for applications ranging from education to industrial processes, behavioural modification and games. While tools have been written to enable end users to generate static environments, little has been done with respect to dynamic ones, where behaviour is a major element for believability. This is still very much the province of the programmer.This paper examines the current state of virtual reality development with particular reference to the specification and inclusion of behaviour. It highlights the need to distance such specification from the implementation of code to generate the behaviour.The paper proposes a view of behaviour and goes on to develop a software architecture which provides the basis for implementing behaviours at run time. It continues with an analysis of what is needed for behaviour specification and develops an appropriate declarative behaviour description language which enables the separation of behaviour specification from implementation. The work provides a platform on which meta-tools could be built for behaviour specification. A number of examples are included to demonstrate the architecture and behaviour description language in use.

REFERENCES

• 1: Allen Bierbaum , Christopher Just , Patrick Hartling , Kevin Meinert , Albert Baker , Carolina Cruz-Neira, VR Juggler: A Virtual Platform for Virtual Reality Application Development, Proceedings of the Virtual Reality 2001 Conference (VR'01), p.89, March 13-17, 2001
• 2: Broll W., England D. et al. (1996) Towards Interactive Virtual Environments: Interaction and Behaviour Extensions for VRML http://orgwis.gmd.de/projects/VR/vrml/techReport/report.html, accessed: 17 January 2003.
• 3: Burrows, A. L. (2004), The Specification of Behaviour in Virtual Environments, Ph.D. Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2004.
• 4: Anthony L. Burrows , David England, Java 3D, 3D graphical environments and behaviour, Software—Practice & Experience, v.32 n.4, p.359-376, 10 April 2002 [doi>10.1002/spe.441]
• 5: Stephen Chenney , Jeffrey Ichnowski , David Forsyth, Efficient dynamics modeling for VRML and Java, Proceedings of the third symposium on Virtual reality modeling language, p.15-24, February 16-20, 1998, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/271897.271908]
• 6: Codognet P. and Richard N. (1997) Multi-Way Constraints for Describing High-Level Object Behaviours in VRML in Proceedings of Workshop on VRML and Object Orientation, Monterey, California, USA, ACM Press.
• 7: Jonathan D. Cohen , Ming C. Lin , Dinesh Manocha , Madhav Ponamgi, I-COLLIDE: an interactive and exact collision detection system for large-scale environments, Proceedings of the 1995 symposium on Interactive 3D graphics, p.189-ff., April 09-12, 1995, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/199404.199437]
• 8: Matthew Conway , Steve Audia , Tommy Burnette , Dennis Cosgrove , Kevin Christiansen, Alice: lessons learned from building a 3D system for novices, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.486-493, April 01-06, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/332040.332481]
• 9: Cortona (2003) Cortona VRML Client, http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/cortona/notes/, accessed: 5 May 2003.
• 10: Raimund Dachselt , Enrico Rukzio, Behavior3D: an XML-based framework for 3D graphics behavior, Proceeding of the eighth international conference on 3D Web technology, March 09-12, 2003, Saint Malo, France [doi>10.1145/636593.636609]
• 11: Daubrenet S., Pettifer S. et al. (2000) Behaviours and Relationships: Providing Structure and Behaviour for Shared Virtual Environments in Proceedings of 7th UKVRSIG Conference, p117 - 126, Strathclyde, Scotland, Strathclyde University.
• 12: Dede C., Loftin R. B. et al. (1994) The Design of Artificial Realities to Improve Learning Newtonian Mechanics in Proceedings of 1994 East-West International Conference on Multimedia; Hypermedia and Virtual Reality, Moscow,
• 13: A. Del Bimbo , E. Vicario , D. Zingoni, Interactive training of virtual agents, Proceedings of the workshop on Advanced visual interfaces, p.172-181, June 01-04, 1994, Bari, Italy [doi>10.1145/192309.192345]
• 14: Frédéric Devillers , Stéphane Donikian, A scenario language to orchestrate virtual world evolution, Proceedings of the 2003 ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics symposium on Computer animation, July 26-27, 2003, San Diego, California
• 15: Diehl S. (1997a) Extending VRML by One-Way Equational Constraints in Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, Schloss Hagenberg, Austria,
• 16: S. Diehl, VRML++: A Language for Object-Oriented Virtual-Reality Models, Proceedings of the Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems-Tools - 24, p.141, September 01-01, 1997
• 17: Diehl S. (1997c) VRML++: Adding Classes to VRML in Proceedings of VRML97, Monterey, California, USA, ACM Press.
• 18: Stephan Diehl , Jörg Keller, VRML with constraints, Proceedings of the fifth symposium on Virtual reality modeling language (Web3D-VRML), p.81-86, February 20-24, 2000, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/330160.330185]
• 19: Paul A. Fishwick, 3D behavioral model design for simulation and software engineering, Proceedings of the fifth symposium on Virtual reality modeling language (Web3D-VRML), p.7-16, February 20-24, 2000, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/330160.330164]
• 20: C. Geiger , V. Paelke , C. Reimann , W. Rosenbach, A framework for the structured design of VR/AR content, Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology, October 22-25, 2000, Seoul, Korea [doi>10.1145/502390.502405]
• 21: Gigante M. (1993) Virtual Reality: Definitions, History and Applications, in R. A. Earnshaw, et al. Virtual Reality Systems, p 3--14.
• 22: Zayd Hendricks , Gary Marsden , Edwin Blake, A meta-authoring tool for specifying interactions in virtual reality environments, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Computer graphics, virtual Reality, visualisation and interaction in Africa, February 03-05, 2003, Cape Town, South Africa [doi>10.1145/602330.602362]
• 23: Thomas C. Hudson , Ming C. Lin , Jonathan Cohen , Stefan Gottschalk , Dinesh Manocha, V-COLLIDE: accelerated collision detection for VRML, Proceedings of the second symposium on Virtual reality modeling language, p.117-ff., February 24-26, 1997, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/253437.253472]
• 24: Byungdae Jung , Jaein Hwang , Sangyoon Lee , Gerard Jounghyun Kim , Hyunbin Kim, Incorporating co-presence in distributed virtual music environment, Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology, October 22-25, 2000, Seoul, Korea [doi>10.1145/502390.502429]
• 25: Bernhard Jung , Jan-Torsten Milde, An open virtual environment for autonomous agents using VRML and Java, Proceedings of the fourth symposium on Virtual reality modeling language, p.7-11, February 23-26, 1999, Paderborn, Germany [doi>10.1145/299246.299255]
• 26: Matsuda K., Honda Y. et al. (1996) Sony's Approach to Behaviour and Scripting aspects of VRML: An Object Oriented Perspective, http://www.cls.sony.co.jp/project/vs/proposal/behavscri.html, accessed: 28 December 1998
• 27: Mirtich B. (1997) V-Clip: Fast and Robust Polyhedral Collision Detection, Technical Report TR97-05, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, Cambridge, Ma.
• 28: David R. Nadeau , John L. Moreland, The Virtual Reality Behavior System (VRBS): a behavior language protocol for VRML, Proceedings of the first symposium on Virtual reality modeling language, p.53-61, December 13-15, 1995, San Diego, California, United States [doi>10.1145/217306.217314]
• 29: Nadeau D. R. and Moreland J. L. (1995b) The Virtual Reality Behaviour System (VRBS): Communications Protocol and PERL API Specification, http://www.sdsc.edu/~moreland/publications/vrbs/vrbs-proto.html, accessed: 28 February 2003.
• 30: Bonnie A. Nardi, A small matter of programming: perspectives on end user computing, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993
• 31: Carol O'Sullivan , John Dingliana, Collisions and perception, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.20 n.3, p.151-168, July 2001 [doi>10.1145/501786.501788]
• 32: Papper M. J. and Gigante M. A. (1993) Using Physical Constraints in a Virtual Environment, in R. A. Earnshaw, et al. Virtual Reality Systems, p 107--117.
• 33: Marilyn C. Salzman , R. Bowen Loftin , Chris Dede , Deirdre McGlynn, ScienceSpace: lessons for designing immersive virtual realities, Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems: common ground, p.89-90, April 13-18, 1996, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [doi>10.1145/257089.257167]
• 34: Martin R. Stytz , John Vanderburgh , Sheila B. Banks, The Solar System Modeler, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, v.17 n.5, p.47-57, September 1997 [doi>10.1109/38.610205]
• 35: Tatsuhiko Sugiyama , Susumu Konno , Tetsuo Kinoshita , Kenji Sugawara , Norio Shiratori, Interaction Techniques for Visual Programming-Based Design of the 3D Object's Behaviors and Its Implementation, Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Networking, p.0722, January 21-23, 1998
• 36: Vildan Tanriverdi , Robert J.K. Jacob, VRID: a design model and methodology for developing virtual reality interfaces, Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology, November 15-17, 2001, Baniff, Alberta, Canada [doi>10.1145/505008.505042]
• 37: John Wann , Mark Mon-Williams, What does virtual reality need?: human factors issues in the design of three-dimensional computer environments, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.44 n.6, p.829-847, June 1996 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.1996.0035]
• 38: Alan Watt , Fabio Policarpo, 3d Computer Games Technology: Real-Time Rendering and Software with Cdrom, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2000
• 39: Zachmann G. (1996) A Language for Describing Behavior of and Interaction with Virtual Worlds in Proceedings of VRST96, p 143--150, ACM Press.