Collaborative 3D interaction in Virtual Environments : a workflow-based approach
Résumé
Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are complex environments where multiple users share the same objects to act together. The complexity of these environments is related to the interaction of the user group with shared items. In a shared world, several constraints appear, including those related to coordination and communication of users and user interaction management in virtual world towards objects and other users. The existing single or multiuser 3D interactions in Virtual Reality (VR) are currently far from providing suitable solutions. Indeed, the 3D interaction suffers from a lack of models and formalisms to manage and control the actions and intentions of users in the virtual environment. The interaction of multiple users with the virtual environment is limited and many researches are in progress. The main objective of the research in the field of multiuser 3D interaction is to instruct users to evolve in CVEs, and to interact together efficiently and easily with virtual entities. Currently, there are two types of synchronous multiuser 3D interaction techniques. A first category separates the degrees of freedom (DoF) for the object to manipulate. In this case, users operate single user techniques by acting on the degrees of freedom which are assigned to them. For the second category, a function will determine the final movement from the position and orientation of the user object in the CVE. This involves using a new technique in multiuser situations. However, all of these techniques do not take into account the constraints of coordination and communication between users and focus exclusively on manipulation tasks with two users. However, the design of a CVE requires considering multiuser interactions from Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) point of view, as well as the management of group interactions. Another aspect to consider is the heterogeneity of virtual reality platforms used by participants as well as the disparity between users for providing new models and systems supporting efficient collaborative work and enhancing presence in CVEs. This chapter presents a useful workflow-based approach to manage 3D interactions and enhance presence in CVEs. This approach combines astutely different concepts from two research domains: CSCW and VR. The second section outlines and discusses the background of recent contributions concerning collaborative 3D interaction techniques. Section three presents some fundamental concepts relevant to the management of group interactions in a CVE. Section four describes and details our contribution concerning a workflow-based approach to design collaborative 3D interactions. Experimentations and evaluations are given Collaborative 3D Interaction in Virtual Environments: a Workflow-Based Approach 32 Virtual Reality and discussed in section five. The last section concludes the chapter and presents some future works.