Avatar: a virtual reality based tool for collaborative production of theater shows

One of the more important limitations of actual tools for performing arts production and design is that collaboration between designers is hard to achieve. In fact, designers must actually be co-located to collaborate in the design of a show, something that is not always possible. While teleconference tools could be used to partially solve this problem, this solution offers no direct interactivity and no synchronization between designers. Also some problems like perspective effects and single viewpoint constrained by the camera are inherent to this solution. Specialized software for performing arts design (e.g. "Life Forms") do not generally provide real-time collaboration and are not really convenient for collaborative work. Also, these systems are often expensive and complex to operate. A more adapted solution combining concepts from virtual reality, network technology, and computer vision has then been specifically developed for collaborative work by performing arts designers. This paper presents a virtual reality application for supporting distributed collaborative production of theater shows resulting from our research. Among other constraints, this application has to ensure that the virtual scene that is being shared between multiple designers is always in sync (by use of computer vision) with a real counterpart and that this synchronization is achieved in real-time. Also, system cost must be kept as low as possible, platform independence must be achieved whenever possible and, since it is to be used by people that are not computer experts, the application has to be user-friendly.