FORUM Short Papers Presence in Shared Virtual Environments and Virtual Togetherness

This Forum article discusses the relationships among people, their avatars, and their virtual environment workstations in a shared virtual environment. It introduces the notion of to-getherness, the sense of people being together in a shared space, which is the counterpart for shared VEs to the pres-ence of an individual in a VE. The role of tactual communica-tion is emphasized as being fundamental to togetherness.