3D visual component based approach for immersive collaborative virtual environments

This paper treats the usefulness of 3D visual component based approach for development of immersive collaborative virtual environments. The research group of the author has already proposed a 3D software development system called IntelligentBox. IntelligentBox has provided various software components called boxes, which are 3D visible, reactive objects. IntelligentBox allows the user to develop 3D graphics applications by combining already existing boxes through direct manipulations on a computer screen without writing any text-based program. This is the main feature of IntelligentBox, which is a difference from other conventional systems. IntelligentBox also provided a particular box called RoomBox, which enables to build distributed 3D graphics applications. However, RoomBox supported only a mouse device. To develop immersive collaborative virtual environments, IntelligentBox has to support various input and output devices. Then, the author developed such functionalities as new boxes and introduced them into IntelligentBox. The author also extended the functionality of RoomBox in order to treat those new boxes. With these boxes, IntelligentBox came to have the aspects of a development system for immersive collaborative virtual environments.