Hypermedia in the Virtual Project Room Toward Open 3D Spatial Hypermedia

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Hypermedia in the Virtual Project Room- Toward
Open 3D Spatial Hypermedia

• Preben Mogensen Kaj Grønbæk
• InterMedia Dept. of Computer ScienceUniversity
  of AarhusDK-8200 Aarhus C, DenmarkEmailpmogens
  en, kgronbak_at_daimi.au.dk

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Outline

• Introduction
• Problem domain
• Collaboration support for architects and
  designers
• Sources of inspiration
• Spatial hypermedia and open hypermedia
• Collaborative Virtual Environments
• The Manufaktur prototype
• Architecture
• 3D spatial hypermedia
• Collaboration support
• Status and future work

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Toward virtual project rooms

• Projects in our lab focusing on support for
  designers/architects
• spatial organization of heterogeneous materials
• bridging between physical and virtual worlds
• designing office and project room layout
• distributed collaboration
• Prototypical user groups
• Industrial design LEGO Futura, Design/Nord, etc.
• Landscape/Townscape architects
• The EU DESARTE Project
• Participatory design with Landscape architects
  and architects
• The original Manufaktur concept (PC version
  DirectX)
• Distributed Multimedia (DMM) project
• Distribution and collaboration architecture
• Stereo-based Manufaktur (SGI version with OpenGL)
• Collaboration with Aarhus School of Architecture
• Interactive Room project, e.g. designing a video
  analysis room

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Problem domain
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Studies of architects' and designers' work
environments

• Designers and architects working on common
  projects are often physically co-located in large
  office spaces
• physical project rooms
• Important materials are constantly available in
  the room on bulletin boards, whiteboards,
  flipovers etc.
• People often work in smaller groups around
  boards, computers and tables.
• Need bridge between physical and computer based
  material
• e.g paper and physical objects
• Co-location stimulates collaboration
• peripheral awareness about common tasks, implicit
  learning
• seamless transition between individual and
  collaborative work

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Project room for landscape architects
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materials organized spatially...
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samples brought into the room...
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TechnologyInspiration
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Spatial hypermedia in 2D

• Example The classical VIKI system (Marshall and
  Shipman)
• CAOS - Open Collaborative Spatial Hypermedia
• Implicit grouping of related items based on
  spatial proximity

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A 2D desktop is insufficient to mimic physical
organization of material

• 3D provides a better overview of materials

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Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE)

• 3D collaborative environments
• MASSIVE-1 and 2 from Nottingham
• DIVE from SICS in Sweden
• Both systems support
• Tele-conferencing (audio,video, shared boards) in
  virtual worlds
• Internet distribution
• Collaboration between many users represented as
  avatars
• Use aura concept to express proximity in virtual
  spaces
• An aura is a specification of a 3D region in
  which a service or an avatar is visible or
  present
• When an avatars aura intersect with that of
  another person they can see each other and start
  communicating
• When an avatars aura intersect with that of a
  service (e.g. a conference table) the service
  become available
• DIVE uses VRML and MASSIVE uses proprietary
  OpenGL based software

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CVE examples

• MASSIVE (http//www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/research/sys
  tems/)

• DIVE(http//www.sics.se/dive/)

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Traditional CVE Weaknesses

• Focus on casual formation of meetings and
  conferences
• Avatars are not well-suited for illustrating
  ongoing work
• Documents are not taken serious - boils down to
  runic inscriptions
• No integration of real working tools, such as CAD
  and Word processors

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TheManufakturSystem
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Manufaktur Document Centered CVE

• General infrastructure for document-centered CVE
• Management of Workspaces, collections of material
  belonging to, e.g. task or project contexts
• Live hypermedia-links to real documents
• Distributed and collaborative architecture
• Multi platform support (DirectX and OpenGL)
• No human-like avatars - hand and camera only

ObjectServer
CollaborationServer
Open HMServer
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Manufaktur Open Hypermedia Integration
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Manufaktur display architecture
PC - 3DManufaktur
DirectX
COM
SGI - 3DManufaktur
Shared servers
OpenGL
Performer
Stereo projection
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Objects in Manufaktur

• Document-objects
• hot-links to office and CAD documents, updates
  are immediately visible
• 3D objects
• 3D Studio models, e.g. mobile phones,
  rollerskates, or landscapes can be loaded into
  the workspace
• Implantations
• objects and devices to custom ("furnish") the
  space
• Groupings
• explicitly or implicitly formed collections of
  objects that can be manipulated as a whole
• ActiveEndpoints
• ActiveX-based link anchors that can be placed on
  top of Document-objects (Microsoft platform only)

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Groupings
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Explicit and Implicit grouping spatial
hypermedia structuring

• Groups may be created manually
• add to group
• remove from group
• Groups may be identified semi-automatically based
  on intersecting auras
• invoking 3D spatial parsing on demand
• as future work, we consider background
  incremental parsing
• Groups can be stored and handled as hypermedia
  composite objects

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Implantations
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ActiveX-based open hypermedia links
Endpoint ID Moniker
Endpoint ID Moniker
Link
External Document
External Document
ActiveEndpoint (Anchor) ID
ActiveEndpoint (Anchor) ID
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Conclusion
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Open issues

• Manufaktur as a "roomware" component
• Projection devices Smartboard, HoloBench and
  tables
• Two-handed input, gesture interface, speech
  recognition
• Understanding workspaces and work practice
• Metaphors for workspaces
• Space topology and furnishing
• Representing hypermedia structures in 3D
• visualization of structures, natural integration
  in the common workspace
• Collaboration support
• tightly and loosely coupled collaboration
• common view
• common orientation

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Status and future work
Comprehensive prototype for Windows 2000

• Single user version tested by users in work-like
  environments
• Architects in Austria, Denmark and the UK
• Integration of MS Windows version with SGI IRIX
  (HoloBench and similar)
• Roomware development and physical room design
• PC based client coupled with SGI based
  stereodisplay built into table
• Wall projections of shared workspaces
• Prototype room setup in June 2000
• Test in distributed use setting fall 2000 2001

Proof of concept prototype
In collaboration with School of Architecture in
Aarhus
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3D workbenches

• Projection based VR
• immersion through active stereo vision
• Collaboration
• Between people at the same place
• Between remotely separated people