Populated Information Terrains: Virtual Environments for Sharing Data

This paper is a follow up to previous working papers on Populated Information Terrains. It contains more analysis and also some details of early prototyping activities. The concept of Populated Information Terrains (PITS) aims to combine ideas from Virtual Reality (VR) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) to extend traditional database technology. PITS are virtual data spaces which support visualisation of, and cooperative work within, shared data. This paper identifies key techniques for building PITS for various types of database, including multi-dimensional visualisation, statistical approaches, graph drawing techniques and human centred approaches. We then discuss issues concerned with populating such terrains including communication between users, embodiment of users, peripheral awareness of others and its relation to database concurrency control. Finally, we describe a prototype implementation that demonstrates the concept of PITS and which helps clarifies key design issues for future full-scale implementations. Document ID COMIC-NOTT-4-12 Status DRAFT Type Paper Version 1.0 Date Mon, Aug 08, 1994 Author(s) Steve Benford, John Mariani.