Balaji Natarajan

Java scripting support in VRML2/VRML97 set the stage for experimenting with multiuser distributed virtual environments on the Internet, hereafter referred to as televirtual, or TVR, environments. A typical minimal configuration of such a system would include a few VRML2 browsers, downloading a common VRML world and opening Java node-based connections to a collaborative server that maps user input such as mouse motions on suitable movements of the corresponding avatars. We developed a simple prototype TVR environment of this type at Syracuse University's Northeast Parallel Architectures Center (NPAC), as part of a joint project with IBM T.J. Watson Research, using the JSDA (Java Shared Data Architecture) framework for building Java collaborative services. Several prototype TVR environments of a similar type have been developed by groups such as Sony, Paragraph (Mitra)... (more)