Visualization in teleimmersive environments

In collaborative virtual reality (VR), the goal is to reproduce a face-to-f ace meeting in minute detail. Teleimmersion moves beyond this idea, integra ting collaborative VR with audio- and videoconferencing that may involve da ta mining and heavy computation. In teleimmersion, collaborators at remote sites share the details of a virt ual world that can autonomously control computation, query databases, and g ather results. They don't meet ina room to discuss a car engine; they meet in the engine itself. The University of Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) has hosted several applications that demonstrate rudimentary teleimm ersion. All users are members of Cavern-the CAVE Research Network (www.evl. uic.edu/ cavern)-a collection of participating industrial and research inst itutions equipped with CAVE (Cave Automated Virtual Environment), ImmersaDe sk VR systems, and high-performance computing resources, including high-spe ed networks. There are more than 100 CAVE and ImmersaDesk installations worldwide. The p ressing challenge now, as this article illustrates, is how to support colla borative work among Cavern users without having them worry about the detail s of sustaining a collaboration. Another problem is providing both synchron ous and asynchronous collaboration. The authors detail how they've built new display devices to serve as more c onvenient teleimmersion end points and to support their international netwo rking infrastructure with sufficient bandwidth to support the needs of tele immersive applications.