Afreecaan architecture for the development of collaborative virtual environment

Resumen

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) allow several geographically distributed users to share and interact in a common virtual world. This idea has attracted the attention of many potential users during the years. In the past, the limited computing capabilities of desktop systems, the quality of the network connections and the high prices of VR devices made it impossible to bring this kind of technilogy to the users. Even though these limitations seem to be disappearing nowadays, this fact is not reflected in the CVEs available, in which interaction mainly extends the techniques and metaphors used in Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). This situation is the result of the lack of appropriate development platforms. Current CVE development platforms mainly rely on mechanisms inherited from GUIs. These platforms are not inspired on the theory of Three Dimensional User Interfaces (3DUIs) and, as a result, they cannot benefit from the richness of 3D interaction. This thesis describes AFreeCA, a CVE development platform that is inspired on the theory of 3DUIs. The design of AFreeCA is guided by four models, a model of space, a model of virtual object, a model of communication and a model of interaction technique, which are finally reflected on a reference architecture.