Collaborative virtual environments, real-time video and networking

Two real-life workplaces, a studio and an office, are described. Both have virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality counterparts. Issues of work processes and social interaction taken from CSCW are utilised to understand the functionalities that virtual studios and offices need to provide. It is broadly concluded that different media (documents, audio, video, VR) all have different strengths and weaknesses, and each may be appropriate for different purposes in different contexts. Offices and studios are best extended into virtuality by a mix of media (mixed realities) with a VR interface. The integration of video into VR environments presents the greatest technical difficulties, and some of these are considered from the viewpoints of computational load and networking. It is concluded that an optimal solution would be to provide separate network architectures for real-time interactive VR and video.