University of Houston

Department of Computer Science

In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Simon Su

will defend his dissertation

An Application of Distributed Virtual Reality:

Distributed Collaborative PaulingWorld

Abstract

Distributed Virtual Reality applications have been used to create training and simulation scenario where the support for more than one participant is required. One of the goals of this dissertation is to design and implement a new technique that will facilitate the collaboration among the users within the Virtual Environment. Most of the existing Distributed Virtual Reality applications support one active participant, and one or more passive participants. The technique developed in the dissertation allows equal interaction among all the participants in the Distributed Virtual Environment. Another goal of this dissertation is to design and implement new interaction techniques to allow more efficient interaction between the user of the Virtual Reality application and the application. To this end, a hybrid of two-dimensional and three-dimensional interaction techniques is designed and implemented. Virtual Reality applications provide the advantage of the added dimension. Therefore, Virtual Reality applications should take full advantage of the added dimension that this technology provides.A study was also conducted to validate the design and implementation of this dissertation. Twenty students from the University of Houston participated in a study to evaluate the design and implementation of the collaboration and interaction techniques. As shown in the survey, the collaboration techniques prove to the useful and the interaction techniques improved the user experience in the interaction with the Virtual Reality application.

Date: Monday, April 23^rd, 2001

Time: 10:00 AM

Place: 646-PGH

Faculty, students, and the general public are invited.

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Ernst L. Leiss