Ubiquitous Virtual Reality: Accessing Shared Virtual Environments through Videoconferencing Technology

This paper presents an alternative to existing methods for remotely accessing Virtual Reality (VR) systems. Common solutions are based on specialised software and/or hardware capable of rendering 3D content, which not only restricts accessibility to specific platforms but also increases the barrier for non expert users. Our approach addresses new audiences by making existing Virtual Environments (VEs) ubiquitously accessible. Its appeal is that a large variety of clients, like desktop PCs and handhelds, are ready to connect to VEs out of the box. We achieve this combining established videoconferencing protocol standards with a server based interaction handling. Currently interaction is based on natural speech, typed textual input and visual feedback, but extensions to support natural gestures are possible and planned. This paper presents the conceptual framework enabling videoconferencing with collaborative VEs as well as an example application for a virtual prototyping system.