Spotlight Interest Management for Distributed Virtual Environments

Dunwell, Ian; Whelan, John C.

Spotlight Interest Management for Distributed Virtual Environments

Files

119-126.pdf (292.38 KB)

Date

2008

Authors

Dunwell, Ian
Whelan, John C.

Publisher

The Eurographics Association

Abstract

This paper presents a novel refinement to visual attention-based interest management in distributed virtual environments (VEs). It is suggested that in the context of a desktop VE where only limited immersion occurs, using proximity in virtual space as a primary measure of relevance may be less effective than considering the characteristics of visual interaction with the two-dimensional display. The method seeks to utilise a spotlight model of human attention in place of a proximity measure, capable of giving extremely distant clients near the centre of the display priority. In order to evaluate the technique, a series of user experiments are described which seek to study the participant's ability to detect change between techniques in a proprietary collaborative virtual environment. Two groups of users are shown to exhibit a blind preference for the spotlight method, and failed to detect a significant change when available bandwidth was reduced using this approach. The technique may be integrated alongside existing saliency-based interest management paradigms as an alternative to the distance-based factor.

        @inproceedings{:10.2312/EGVE/EGVE08/119-126
,
booktitle = {Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments
},
editor = {Robert van Liere and Betty Mohler
},
title = {{Spotlight Interest Management for Distributed Virtual Environments
}},
author = {Dunwell, Ian and 
Whelan, John C.
},
year = {2008
},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association
},
ISSN = {1727-530X
},
ISBN = {978-3-905674-06-4
},
DOI = {/10.2312/EGVE/EGVE08/119-126
}
}