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Next: Audio and Video Up: Session-based Collaboration (Talk++) Previous: DIVE: 3-D VR

Video Walls

Both MUD and DIVE create synthetic environments that have properties of a physical meeting environment. The synthetic environment, however, is independent of the actual physical environments of the users in the session, thus not quite giving the illusion of ``being there''. We will now see a series of applications that address this problem.

A simple solution is provided by Video walls [], which provides two-way audio and video connections between two remote rooms. Each room has a ``video wall,'' which shows the activities in the other room, thereby allowing the users in the two rooms to interact with each other. A camera at each site sends video to a large projection monitor which displays the image. The audio endpoints are speakers and microphones that cover each room. Experience at Xerox shows that is is possible to use current technology to establish usable video walls connecting two geographically dispersed sites.



Prasun Dewan
Tue Jan 28 17:46:09 EST 1997