Hybrid participant embodiments in networked collaborative virtual environments

The authors present a novel approach to participant embodiment in networked collaborative virtual environments. The embodiment approach integrates live video into 3D objects for a hybrid participant representation. They implemented their ideas in a Networked Collaborative Virtual Environment system, VLNET and investigated network and rendering issues in comparison with virtual human participant embodiment. The paper presents two distinct case studies demonstrating their ideas. The first one is a tele-teaching application, in which they investigate a shared environment with virtual humans and hybrid embodiments. The second one presents a distributed augmented reality application, in which participants share a mixed environment with real and virtual elements.