Instant messaging on the Internet has revolutionized our way of communicating with each other. Applications such as ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger certainly have provided another way to of communication other than electronic mail. However, as networks technology continues to advance with decreasing cost, video and audio conferencing become the complements to text-base messaging. Furthermore, virtual reality has taken an important role in the computing industry in terms of gaming and e-commerce. More and more people are striving for a 3D environment where they can meet, converse, be entertained and even sell their products. Currently, these 3D environments only allow a text-base communication. The lack of video and audio capabilities cannot increase the availability to share data and improve rapid response time. The focus of this report is to address an application with video and audio capabilities which can remedy such costs in virtual reality worlds.
As the online population continues to grow, instead of simply exchanging text messages over the Internet, the integration of video and audio will provide more convenience and bring people even closer than ever before. The idea of using a bot (A relatively small and focused computer application that runs continuously, in the background and simultaneously, as other programs are being run, and responds automatically to a user's activity) in virtual worlds is the best way to begin and explore the effects of video and audio conferencing while users are walking in their virtual worlds. The addition of video and audio capabilities can actually increase live connectability: Seeing other participants gives us those nonverbal communications cues that reassure us in our discussion process. It also improves the availability of sharing data: Images from a computer or document camera can be viewed simultaneously by participants, making it more like a face-to-face meeting. The quality of communication is much better than with audio conferencing and text messaging, not only due to the digital technology, but also due to the visual environment. Since Activeworlds has provided a standard development kit (sdk), a bot is implemented with the integration of SIPC, an external application that provides video and audio conferencing. This bot will initiate a SIP session once an avatar has entered its yelling distance.
As of now, there isn't any application that will allow user to converse through
video, audio or even sharing a whiteboard within a virtual reality world.
However, there are many applications that are either providing virtual reality environments or offering video and audio streaming.
Applications that provide virtual reality environments:
Activeworlds is a company which offers a comprehensive platform in delivering 3D content over the Internet. It allows users to surf over 3D virtual reality worlds, which attempts to provide dynamic 3D content. Users can own and build their own world in whichever way they desire. The contents of the world can range from personal settings to commercial to academia. Not only does these worlds allow avatars to converse, but also allow them to play online games, shop for different products, or even learn [1].
SIPC is a SIP user agent that can be used for Internet telephony calls, multimedia conferences, instant messaging, web browsing sharing and device control. It supports a range of media types, such as audio, video, text and white board, and can be extended easily to additional media types [8].
SIP, the Session Initiation Protocol, is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification and instant messaging [7].
The implementation of the bot above is written in ANSI-C language and is about 1500 lines. The application was designed as a simple communication program so that it can be used for multiple purposes. Several libraries are utilized in the implementation. These include:
Note that the application can only be run under the Windows operating system due to the specification of the SDK supplied by Activeworlds.
The implementation of the bot has been separated into the following modules.
Main Module:
Uses the parse module, parses options and starts appropriate modules with correct context.Parsing Module:
The parsing module is responsible for parsing command line options and forces the existence of a certain necessary inputs.Respond Module:
Reply with the correct type of response according to incoming messages.Event Module:
The event module is responsible for handling all the necessary events of the bot and is further separated into the following sub-modules.Avatar Add Module:
Indicates the arrival of all avatars and sends them greeting messages.Avatar Chat Module:
Handles and analyzes all incoming "talks," "whispers," and "broadcasts" messages of all avatars within range. It will then call the response module for returning appropriate responses to the avatars.Avatar Change Module:
Keeps track of the positions of all the avatars that are within range. Alerts the bot owner when an avatar is within range and initiate a SIPC session.Click Module:
Handles mouse clicks initiated by other avatars. It will set off a SIP session with the avatar.Linear Hash Table Module:
Records all the sip addresses provided by the avatars.SIPC Module:
This module is not implemented by the author. It is responsible for audio and video communication.
Please click here for program documentation
Design and implementation along with the purchase of the Activeworlds account and world were all completed and made by Clayton Chen. SIPC is provided by Prof. Henning Schulzrinne and Xiaotao Wu.