Software Infrastructure For Multi-Modal Virtual Environments

Virtual environment systems, especially those supporting multi-modal interactions require a robust and flexible software infrastructure that supports a wide range of devices, interaction techniques, and target applications. In addition to interactivity needs, a key factor of robustness of the software is the minimization of latency and more importantly, reduction of jitter (the variability of latency). This paper presents a flexible software infrastructure that has demonstrated robustness in initial prototyping. The infrastructure, based on the VESS Libraries from the University of Central Florida, simplifies the task of creating multi-modal virtual environments. Our extensions to VESS include numerous features to support new input and output devices for new sensory modalities and interaction techniques, as well as some control over latency and jitter. Copyright 2004 ACM