Virtual Life in Virtual Environments

Virtual Environment is at the heart of Virtual Reality. High delity environment can become inhabited by virtual lives so that human users will feel immersed in a \real" world. With the unlimited application of VR, Virtual Life becomes a new and promising area. In the view of no clear deenition and explanation on the notion of Virtual Life, this paper has tried to deene and discuss it from a systematic view. For a true feeling of presence, virtual life should have a visual model for realistic visual shape and appearance, and a mental model for believable behaviour. This mental model should be autonomous to make decisions by itself, adaptive to promote its structure for better maintenance, and interactive to external changes, especially to human user's actions, by characteristic activities. Although virtual life derives from the real life, it is not just a simple copy of the real one. It has also its own features since its living sphere is a simulated one. The study of Virtual Life utilizes knowledge from various disciplines and intertwines with many other areas in computer science, including computer graphics, artiicial life, autonomous agents and artiicial intelligence. This paper reviews related areas and work and expects more attention to be paid on Virtual Life, a new eld which is beginning to take shape.