engleski

A Challenge for Interactive Virtual Characters on the Internet

Interactive virtual characters may be described as graphical simulations of real or imaginary "persons" capable of human-like behavior, most notably talking and gesturing. From the network point of view, interactive virtual characters are complex Internet applications, which involve streaming of multimedia content, such as 3D animation and (synthesized) speech. This content is intended to be delivered to any user platform, ranging from PCs to the new generation of multimedia-enabled mobile phones. In this vision, there are numerous limitations coming from the user platform, as well as the network itself, that need to be taken into account. We present a systematic approach on how to address some of these issues, and also show some empirical results on networking requirements for such applications in terms of networking QoS. Two case studies have been used to illustrate the proposed approach, one using our own 3D interactive conversational virtual character on the Web, and the other using a commercial multi-user shared virtual environment.

virtual environment; interactive virtual character; Internet; new generation network

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