COVEN:
COllaborative Virtual ENvironments: Nottingham Private Project Pages
COVEN:
COllaborative Virtual ENvironments: Nottingham Private Project Pages
These are the private project pages for Nottingham. They contain details of the activities we have been, are, and will be involved in. There are detailed descriptions of the ISDN and IP trials in WP3.
This section lists the activity descriptions from the technical annex (revised March 98) which have, do or will involve(d) us at Nottingham. Deliverables are available from the project ftp site at Thomson. There are links to individual deliverbales below.
This first section is probably only of interest to people at Nottingham - if you're after trials info then scroll down the page or use the link above.
The aim of workpackage 1 is to develop a generic platform for constructing Collaborative Virtual Environment applications based on an extension to the dVS commercial VR platform from Division Ltd and driven by the research results of various partners, the requirements of the COVEN demonstrator and, later on, actual experiences with this application.
SICS has significant experience in the development, distribution and support of one of the most widely used multi-user VR systems (DIVE). Both dVS and DIVE provide the basis for platform development in both the commercial and research sectors.
| Activity | Title | Responsible | Finished/Ongoing/Starts in ... |
| 1.1 | Specification of Initial enhancements to dVS | SICS | Finished - D1.1 |
| 1.2 | Implementation of initial enhancements to dVS | Division | Finished - D1.2 |
| 1.3 | Specification of further enhancements to the COVEN platform | SICS | Finished - D1.3 |
| 1.4bis | Specification of a reference architecture for networked VR applications | TNO | September 1998 and ends November 1998 - D1.6 |
| 1.5 | Specification of scaleability extensions to the COVEN platform | Nottingham | Finished - D1.5 |
The aim of this workpackage is to focus development on an application which shows the utility of multi-user cooperative VR. The focusing theme for the application will be the development of support for travel and conference arrangement.
| Activity | Title | Responsible | Finished/Ongoing/Starts on ... |
| 2.7 | Guidelines for the design of CVE applications | KPN | Finished - D2.6 |
The aim of this workpackage is to focus the installation and use of the software produced within COVEN in order to provide meaningful assessment and experience of network performance and application usage.
| Activity | Title | Responsible | Finished/Ongoing/Starts in ... |
| 3.1 | Installation and testing of the baseline platform | Division | Finished - D3.1, D3.2 |
| 3.2 | Usage evaluation of the initial applications | UCL | Finished - D3.3 |
| 3.3 | Network Assessment of the initial applications | Nottingham | Finished - D3.4 |
| 3.4 | Usage evaluation of the on-line applications | UCL | Started April 1998 and ends October 1998 - D3.5 |
| 3.5 | Network assessment of the on-line applications | Nottingham | Started April 1998 and ends October 1998 - D3.6 |
| 3.6 | Usage evaluation of the extended application | UCL | March 1999 and ends August 1999 - D3.7, D3.8 |
| 3.7 | Network assessment of the extended application | Nottingham | March 1999 and ends August 1999 - D3.9 |
Together with workpackage 8, this workpackage is developing underlying techniques that are necessary to construct the applications and the COVEN platform. These include techniques for modelling and animating humanoid figures on CVEs and techniques for speech and gestural input for controlling CVEs.
| Activity | Title | Responsibility | Finished/Ongoing/Starts in ... |
| 4.2 | Multi-modal interaction techniques for shared virtual environments | Thomson | Finished - D4.2 |
| 4.3 | Collaborative Interaction Techniques | UCL | Finished - D4.3 |
| 4.5 | Specification of a reference architecture for collaborative interaction | UCL | April 1998 and ends in June 1998 - D4.5 |
The aim of this workpackage is to promote the industrial takeup and exploitation of this key technology.
| Activity | Title | Responsibility | Finished/Ongoing/Starts on ... |
| 5.2 | Dissemination I | Thomson | Finished - D5.2 |
| 5.3 | Dissemination II | Thomson | Finished - D5.3 |
| 5.5 | Additional dissemination materials | Thomson | March 1999 and ends May 1999 - D5.5 |
| 5.6 | Support of the ACTS concertation process | Thomson | Ends September 1999 |
Standard project management stuff. technical management is coordinated by Thomson, financial management and reporting is coordinated by Arax.
| Activity | Title | Responsibility | Finished/Ongoing/Starts on ... |
| 6.1 | Management | Thomson | Current - Final Report |
The aim of this workpackage is to contribute to the standardisation process related to the VE domain (DIS and VRML).
| Activity | Title | Responsibility | Finished/Ongoing/Starts on ... |
| 7.1 | Review of DIS techniques for COVEN | TNO | Finished - D7.1 |
| 7.3 | Recommendations and proposed extensions to standards from the COVEN experience | TNO/UCL | Started January 1998 and ends September 1999 - D7.3 |
Together with workpackage 4, this workpackage is developing underlying techniques that are necessary to construct the applications and the COVEN platform. This workpackage is investigating the requirements underlying the COVEN II target issues of scaleability and media, and providing the core models and techniques to support these requirements.
| Activity | Title | Responsibility | Finished/Ongoing/Starts on ... |
| 8.2 | Spatial world structuring models for scaleable CVEs | Nottingham | Finished - D8.2 |
| 8.3 | Semantic world structuring models for scaleable CVEs | Lancaster | Finished - D8.3 |
We are holding three distinct types of trials during activity 3.5
Before considering these in detail a brief overview of the previous trials phase is given by way of some of the images from Deliverable 3.4.
1997 saw over 30 trials held using the initial versions of the business and citizen applications, using the dVS based COVEN platform. These trials enabled us to learn about the process of holding trials, improve data capture facilities from both the platform and applications and perform an initial analysis of captured data from the last six meetings of the trials phase.
Here's a light-hearted clip from one of the early trials (2.3Mb Quicktime movie). More movies are available from the Nottingham Public project page
Eight sites are involved in the ISDN trials which will take place between April 1st 1998 and September 30th 1998: Nottingham, UCL, TNO, KPN, Division, Thomson, IIS and Lancaster.
For each trial there's a separate page with a description of the task and the sites involved. When you are a subject in the trials please do not look at them until the day of the trial!
When you are the person responsible for the trial, please provide us with the complete information for your trial.
Three sites are initially involved in ATM trials, KPN Research, EPFL and Geneva, with this number rising to a maximum of five sites with the inclusion of SICS and UCL.
See the KPN pages for more details.
Four sites are involved in the DIVE trials over heterogeneous IP networks which will take place between April 1999 and August 1999: Nottingham, SICS, Lancaster and UCL.
Details of what we're going to be doing for each trial. Please read this information in advance of each trial, and have it handy while the trial is taking place.
The focus of the combined usability activities is split up in three related threads, listed below. Reported on these pages here, is the first thread listed below, exploratory studies taking place during the network trials. Information about the other threads is reported on the main usability pages.
Since we are working in a new communication medium, exploratory experiments are running during the network trials to unearth new usability and virtual environment design solutions or techniques. Acceptable design solutions will have to satisfy two constraints. A human constraint: it has to be effective and intuitive, and a machine constraint: it has to utilise minimum computational load and network traffic.
The old questionnaires from the first trials phase can be found here.
| Institution | Public Project Pages | Private Project Pages |
| Arax | No | No |
| Division Ltd | ||
| EPFL, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology | Yes | Yes |
| Integrated Information Systems Ltd | Yes | Yes |
| KPN Research | Yes | |
| Lancaster University | Yes | Yes |
| Swedish Institute of Computer Science | Yes | Yes |
| Thomson-CSF, Laboratoire Central de Recherches | Yes | Yes |
| TNO Physics and Electronics | Yes | |
| University College London | Yes | Yes |
| University of Geneva, Mira Lab | Yes | Yes |
| University of Nottingham | Yes | Yes |
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