From: dupontp@division.co.uk
Subject: Re: MISC: Info needed on VR programs
Date:         Thu, 19 Oct 1995 07:14:53 +-100


>From: vouilla7@cti.ecp.fr (Antoine VOUILLON)
>I'm planning to make a program allowing several persons to meet in
a<>virtual 3D place. 
>Each users control a 3D character the appearance of
>which he can change, and can perform actions such as running, jumping, 
[...]

At Siggraph'95, we demonstrated a 4-user immersive VR experience
running  two users on our booth, and two on HP's booth. Each user was
in an HMD  driven by our dVS/dVISE VR software tools, each running on
a separate HP  workstation, and each in complete control of their own
position and  actions within the virtual world. All four users were
in a single shared  virtual world, in which they could work together
(or not) to achieve a  task of assembling a complex object within a
certain time period. All  communication between the four VR systems
was across standard Ethernet,  including packetized audio, so they
could all talk.

This kind of multi-user app is easy to set up in dVS/dVISE - the 
distributed nature of dVS means that multi-user sessions are essentially 
free. You build the single user world (which you can do without any 
programming) based on geometry imported from any leading CAD package, 
and then you can add users to it without extra effort - just connect 
another dVS system across a standard Internet connection (a single ISDN 
bearer channel is sufficient for 2, maybe 3, simultaneous users, if you 
don't put the audio across the same link.) Immersive vs non-immersive is 
not an issue either - just build the world and dVS will make sure it 
runs in either or both modes, with any mix of modes among the 
participants.

Given that you can do this right now with an off-the-shelf commercial 
product, why would you want to program it yourself? Take a look in 
http://www.division.com for examples of what others are doing with this 
software and for more info.

Pierre duPont, Marketing Director       dupontp@division.co.uk
Division Limited, Bristol UK                 phone: +44 1454 615554 fax: 
+44 1454 615532