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Announcement: Virtual Environments Becomes Virtual Worlds Explorer's Virtual Environments technology area has transformed to Virtual Worlds. The August 2007 Viewpoints was the last for Virtual Environments. (Virtual Worlds Viewpoints began in September 2007.) The new Virtual Worlds Technology Map is now available, and client access to Virtual Worlds will continue through the Virtual Environments subscription. Please see the August Viewpoints for additional information about this change. Viewpoints About This Technology (October 2006) Virtual environments—and related areas such as visualization systems, gesture-recognition components, and telepresence systems—allow users to discover new ways of experiencing real-world and simulated phenomena. Three-dimensional graphics-based VEs and visualizations offer new insights into the structure of information useful in a number of fields, including finance, aviation, chemistry, manufacturing, and medicine. VEs and VE components enhance the nature of computing, from text-based dialogues using arcane computer languages to graphically based visualizations and spatial metaphors that symbolically represent text and numerical data. People may use natural hand gestures and head movements to execute commands for navigating through and manipulating objects in virtual worlds. The intuitive nature of VEs may allow users in various disciplines, including people who are unfamiliar with computers, to understand and manipulate complex relationships between data in ways that current interfaces do not allow. VE interfaces need not include a comprehensive system with a head-mounted display and sensor-laced body suit to be effective. Streamlined VE components may offer substantial benefits. For example, in combination with the appropriate visualization software, a lightweight stereoscopic display (similar in form factor to a pair of eyeglasses) may adequately enhance the realism of visualization-based tasks such as scientific inquiry, computer-aided design and engineering, and economic modeling and analysis. VEs and visualization systems may also facilitate collaborative applications among multiple users (who may be linked over a network), allowing on-line group interaction and manipulation of visual models and concepts. VE systems enable accelerated construction and testing of product models, supporting rapid prototyping applications. VE-based simulations and telepresence systems can improve training and education systems by allowing people to gain hands-on experience of complex equipment and processes. For example, such systems increase the effectiveness of medical operations and planning. Telepresence also enables remote and safe investigation of environments that are hostile or inaccessible. The multimodal and intuitive nature of VE components can reduce users' cognitive load and allow them to focus on a task at hand rather than on mastery of a computer process or language. New trends in VE system development attempt to reduce obtrusiveness of components to provide seamless interaction between the computer and the user. Interfaces that allow users to gesture in free space without cumbersome gloves are one example of this trend. In the long term, such systems may even handle subtle physiological actions such as tracking eye movements and measuring bioelectric potentials. Such work may also broaden the user base of computer systems to include disabled people. In combination with technologies such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, and biometrics, VE systems may eventually tailor themselves automatically to a user's individual tasks and physiological capabilities. A system could learn to decipher differences in gestures across users and adapt the interface accordingly. Interesting work is progressing in the exploration of sign languages and gestural interfaces that may provide clues about human gestural capabilities, preferences, and possible standards. |
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