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Virtual amusement park

Objective

Main Objective

The main objective of project VPARK is to extend the existing VLNET Shared Virtual Environment system and to create a Virtual Amusement Park by integrating several applications on the platform. The Virtual Amusement Park will be developed as a major infrastructure to be used at a Pan-European level offering users the possibility to incorporate their own applications in the future.

Technical Approach

Our work will focus on the following issues:

-Extension of VLNET to provide a Networked Virtual Environment Software.

-Development of an attraction builder software.

-Development of four key attractions.

The Core System Architecture will be modular, flexible and open. The internal modules, forming the core of the system, will provide basic functionalities at a relatively low level: visual data base management, animation of virtual humans, rendering, networking. A set of shared memory interfaces will allow external modules to exploit the functionalities provided by the core system. The current VLNET system supports a networked virtual environment that allows multiple users to interact with each other and their surroundings in real time. The users are represented by 3D virtual human actors with realistic appearances and articulations. In addition to user-guided agents, the environment can also include fully autonomous human agents. VLNET incorporates different media: sound, 3D models, facial interaction, textures mapped on 3D objects and real-time movies. The system will be extended in several ways:

-A more advanced network structure will be implemented, allowing better scalability in terms of supported number of users.

-New basic functions will be integrated. System's core and interfaces will be extended to support more multimedia objects: generalized images, speech sequences, video, text.

-APIs will be provided to access the System Core from external applications.

-User interfaces will be provided for defining face and body behaviors.

Summary of Trial

Trial activities are planned for testing and validation of the environment. The first phase of the trials will focus on the stabilization of the connectivity across national boundaries. Remote participants will be able to use different networks (e.g. Internet, ATM, ISDN) to connect to each other. The routing of messages between machines will be performed at the application layer through VLNET servers. That is, a server processing clients connected to ISDN, will forward these clients' messages to other servers processing clients connected to ATM. The UDP protocol, which is standard on these networks, will be utilized for this purpose.
The second phase of the trials will involve quantitative and qualitative testing of the networking overheads, and optimization of the protocol and client software.
The schedule of the planned networked trials is as follows:

Phase I - Network Infrastructure
Due to the generic nature of this trial, a very basic application (e.g. a tutorial session) will be used to test the environment software and infrastructure.
Start date: April 1999
End date: June 1999
Servers/Net-access: EPFL (ATM, Internet), Geneva (ISDN, Internet), Athens (ISDN, Internet), Bradford (SuperJanet, Internet)
Number of End Users: EPFL (2), UG (2), Bradford (2), IIS (2)
Network topology: Multicasting, with the precise communication architecture to be defined in Activity 1.1.

Phase II - Networked Applications
The applications will be tested over the network and shortcomings identified. These will be fixed and optimizations will be implemented in preparation for further trials.
Start date: Sept. 1999
End date: Jan. 2000
Servers/Net-access: EPFL (ATM, Internet), Geneva (ISDN, Internet), Athens (ISDN, Internet), Bradford (SuperJanet)
Number of End Users: EPFL (10), Geneva (10), Bradford (6), IIS (25)
The average number of persons expected per trial/application is 8-10.
Expected Achievements

The major outcome of the project will be the provision of a distributed co-operative Virtual Reality (VR) facility. The establishment of this facility allows the development and evaluation of shared applications paving the way to an important mode of future social interaction.
In the context of the ACTS 3rd Call, VPARK will synthesise the work within several existing ACTS projects such as: COVEN, VIDAS, VISINET. Foreseen achievements specifically include:

-Extension of VLNET to provide a Networked Virtual Environment Software which will allows the development and evaluation of multi-user VR applications.

-Development of four attractions: Virtual Dancing, Virtual Rock Concert, Virtual Theatre and Virtual Olympic games.

-Network trials with the four attractions to make them available to Pan-European level.

-Active contributions to VRML and MPEG-4 SNHC standards.

Expected Impact

The project will demonstrate networking and distributed information access across several European countries. Its technology may have impact on major policies, through the development of teleworking, distributed transnational transactions, open and distance learning systems, virtual museum and site visiting, etc. One of the key economic and social impacts of the project is in laying groundwork for new multimedia technology markets and products and increased competitiveness.
Moreover, the project contributes to the EU economic and social policies with regard to: Overcoming Isolation, New Job Creation, and Development of Rural Areas through the use of Information Technologies.

Main contributions to the programme objectives:
Main deliverables
Distributed co-operative virtual reality facility
Contribution to the programme
Enabling technology for a range of novel multimedia applications - contribution to international standardisation
Key Issues

VLNET is the most advanced networked virtual environment system for representing virtual actors or 3D avatars.

Key issues are:

-Replacement of the client/server network structure by multiple servers.

-Integration of new basic functions: intelligent navigation, object manipulation, generation of individualized walking motion, activation of gestures and emotions for user representations.

-Provision of APIs to allow the programming of attractions.

-Compatibility of user interfaces for defining face and body behaviors with standards (VRML 2.0 and MPEG-4 SNHC).
At the application level, the software will provide the Virtual Park infrastructure, an attraction builder software, and four key attractions; namely, Virtual Dancing, Virtual Rock Concert, Virtual Theater, Virtual Olympic Games. It will also provide functions to introduce interactively the location parameters of the new attractions and functions as an interface to the corresponding attraction program. As new attractions could be easily introduced in the future, VPARK can potentially become the largest Distributed Virtual Space for Amusement.

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

Data not available

Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

Integrated Information Systems SA
EU contribution
No data
Address
72-74,Salaminos Street
176 75 Athens
Greece

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Total cost
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Participants (5)

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Last update: 3 September 2022

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/AC353

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