An Internet virtual reality collaborative environment for effective product design

This paper describes an Internet-based virtual reality collaborative enviro nment called virtual reality-based collaborative environment (VRCE) that wa s developed using VNet, a free software, Java and Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) to demonstrate the feasibility of collaborative design for small to medium size companies that focus on a narrow range of low cost pro ducts. Infrastructure, user functions and operational characteristics are d escribed, and a case illustrates the use of this system that incorporates s ix key design elements needed for a successful virtual collaboration system (VCS). This new VRCE system is compared to existing commercial systems. Di scussion highlights the potential pitfalls in using such a system without c areful consideration of the knowledge required, product complexity and requ ired system customization time. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.