A Study of Cooperative Work Environment using Shared Virtual Environment

研究的目的是探索用户界面技术在网络虚拟环境中应用的可能性，在网络虚拟环境中，多人通过在多个环境中共享各种信息来协同设计结构化对象。研究内容主要集中在以下几个方面：1)开发可用于协同虚拟环境的组件技术；2)开发使用虚拟环境和三维图形用户界面的实用应用软件；3)将传统的二维图形用户界面集成到使用三维图形用户界面的应用软件中，使应用软件能够同时利用二维和三维图形用户界面的优点。作为研究成果，我们建立了可以用于各种虚拟环境应用的三维工作台。该工作台的特点如下。1)工作台表面为三维显示。2)表面可以从水平水平(0度)倾斜到60度。3)结合二维和三维图形用户界面的接口设备可以与工作台一起使用。利用该工作平台，开发了可用于各种CG对象建模的实用应用软件。该软件有效地利用了工作台表面，将工作台的桌面作为一种二维操作的约束面。我们相信，通过将多个3-D工作台结合在一起，可以实现共享的虚拟环境，有效地让多个工作人员分享设计理念和想法，以便更好地沟通。

The purpose of research is to explore the possibility of user interface technique that can be used in networked virtual environment where multiple people cooperatively design structured objects by sharing various information among multiple environments. The research mainly focused on the following topics,1)Development of usable component technology that can be used in cooperative virtual environment.2)Development of an practical application software that uses virtual environment and 3-D GUI, and3)Integrating traditional 2-D GUI into the application software that uses 3-D GUI so that the application software can use benefits of both two- and three- dimensional graphical user interfaces.As research results, we have built 3-D workbench that can be used in various virtual environment applications. The characteristics of the workbench are as follows. 1)The surface of the workbench is 3-D display. 2)The surface can be slanted from horizontal level (0 degree) to the 60 degrees. 3)Interface devices that combine two- and three-dimensional GUI can be used with the workbench. By using this workbench, practical application software that can be used for modeling various CG objects is developed. The software effectively uses workbench surface to use the table top of the work bench to be a sort of constraining surface for two dimensional operations. By combining multiple 3-D workbenches, we believe that the shared virtual environment, which is effectively enables multiple workers to share idoas and thoughts for the design for better communication, can be achieved.