Dynamic Physical Interaction Platform for Collaborative Virtual Environments

Abstract

This work describes our efforts in creating a dynamic physical interaction platform for networked collaborative virtual environments. We achieve this by extending our previous dynamic interaction framework with rigid body simulation. The main idea of this platform is that objects contain their own interaction information and behaviors. As a result, the object interactions are application independent and their behaviors run-time adjustable. The interactive world and object descriptions had to be extended to describe physical parameters as well. The interaction layer is changed and client/server setup is used to make the platform collaborative. The introduced physical realism definitely increases the immersive experience for the users and makes the virtual environment more natural and predictable. Furthermore, no extra network load or delays were introduced. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our techniques, we incorporated them into an existing NVE framework and present the results.