Virtual Reality and Distributed GIS

Virtual Reality and Distributed GIS

Distributed Virtual Reality
The idea behind distributed VR is very simple; a simulated world runs not on one computer system, but on several. The computers are connected over a network (possibly the global Internet), and people using those computers are able to interact in real time, sharing the same virtual world. In theory, people can be sitting at home in London, Paris, New York and Edmonton, all interacting in a meaningful way in VR. Each user in a persistent collaborative virtual environment is represented by an avatar, so that users at other sites in the same virtual environment know where they are and what they are looking at. A collaborative VR application sends tracker information of the user in the VR across the network; at the same time, it receives tracker information of other users in the same VR and displays the avatars at the right translation and rotation in the environment.


Figures 6 : Some Examples of Distributed Virtual Reality [http://www.evl.uic.edu/EVL/VR/networking.asp]
One very good example is the Tele-Presence project done by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, UIUC(University Of Illinois , Chicago). When participants are Tele-immersed, they are able to see and interact with each other and objects in a shared virtual environment. Their presence will be depicted by life-like representations of themselves (avatars) that are generated by real-time, image capture, and modeling techniques. The environment will persist even when all the participants have left it. Another example is the Octopus from VRAC(Virtual Reality Application Center), Iowa State University. Octopus is a toolkit that provides collaborative environment support to virtual reality applications. The main advantage of Octopus is the dynamic connectionless network without any server dependency. This technology may, for instance, be used to carry out Interactive GIS Analysis or simulation without any location constraints. The planners may in be in Paris while the engineers are in Detroit. When the both parts are connected using virtual reality equipment, they could walk around the “analysis” and “point at areas” to better communicate their message.