Wolff, R: Advanced Immersive Tele-Collaboration

Tele-collaboration technologies, such as video- conferencing and shared desktop systems, are used to enable a group of remote people to work together across a distance. We argue that, as of today, linking immersive virtual reality systems provides the closest resemblance of co-location, as remote people and shared objects are brought together in a shared social and spatial context. Balancing responsiveness with consistency, a key factor when employing tele-collaboration systems, however, becomes a great challenge due to the increased data load caused by continuous motion tracking in immersive systems. This book identifies issues in current systems by analysing the development of a highly collaborative benchmark application using a representative mature and well-known collaborative virtual environment system and presents solutions for future advanced immersive tele-collaboration systems. This book is for software developers as well as for researchers and students interested in the technical issues of modern communication systems.