VizGrid: Collaborative visualization grid environment for natural interaction between remote researchers
Ryuichi Matsukura, Koji Koyamada, Yasuo Tan, Yukihiro Karube, Mitsuhiro Moriya · Fujitsu Scientific and Technical Journal · 2004
Recently, as the borders between research fields have become fuzzy, there have been increasing opportunities for researchers in different fields to collaborate with each other. VizGrid is a joint research project between universities, government institutions, Fujitsu, and other industry members that was partially founded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. This project aims to develop a new collaboration space in which three-dimensional (3D) images can be manipulated in a highly realistic virtual environment. This paper describes Volume Communication, which is an infrastructure we developed for the VizGrid project that can generate, communicate, and display functions of 3D image data. We also describe the technical problems in transmitting high-resolution 3D images based on the evaluation of the prototype system we developed. The collaboration space proposed in this paper is used to communicate common objects that configure a virtual environment and images of humans as 3D image data. The receiving side visualizes this data so that important functions, for example, eye-to-eye contact, can be realized to simulate a real face-to-face environment.