DOCTORAATSPROEFSCHRIFT - EDM - UHasselt

2 General Introduction
have boosted computer graphics and animation research, resulting in excellent
real-time graphical rendering of virtual worlds with animated creatures and
physically simulated objects. Auditory feedback has also been investigated
thoroughly, and many contemporary applications support realistic sound effects
and 3D localized sound. On the other hand, olfactory and taste feedback
have gained very little attention from the VR research community and although
some experimental systems exist [Davide 01, Chen 06], these domains
are considered to be in their early research phase. As processing power increased
over the last years, haptic feedback, stimulating the sense of touch,
has gained more and more interest and has grown into a mature domain. As a
result, it has been successfully applied in several practical applications in the
domains of robotics, telerobotics, CAD, sculpting, medical simulations and
training [Stone 00], and several kinds of haptic Input/Output (IO) devices
have been developed [Berkley 03, Fisch 03].
Not only computer interface technology has advanced. The advances in
communication technologies have caused geographical boundaries for social
interaction to be practically dissolved. The use of asynchronous information
exchange systems such as the WWW and email have become omnipresent
and fulfill a key role in the current workspace. The expansion of high-speed
broadband Internet access, has led to the rising of synchronous communication
systems such as applications for real-time communication, videoconferencing
and distributed forms of VR, often referred to as Networked Virtual Environments
(NVEs) or Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs). However, the
deployment of these systems has been much less preeminent.
Thus, the technology to enable realistic NVEs has advanced enormously,
and the research done resulted in several standards allowing the creation and
distribution of different kinds of data necessary to support such environments.
Furthermore, several VR applications are successfully being used in several
fields such as surgery training, flight simulators, networked shared environments
for teleconferencing, human factors analysis, training, education, virtual
prototyping, simulation-based design and entertainment and many more.
The increasing power of contemporary computers combined with the lowering
of hardware and connectivity costs permits people to have all this technology
available in their homes and workplaces. So why is it that we are still working
on 2D desktops? Why are we still sending emails typed on a keyboard? And
how come the only widely known applications of VR are the commercial computer
games? Why don’t we make use of all the technology that is available
at our fingertips?