ABSTRACT
Based on Facial Expression (FE), this paper explores the possible use of the affective communication in Virtual Environments (VEs). The attention of affective communication is examined and some research ideas for developing affective communication in virtual environments are proposed. We place an emphasis on communication between virtual entities, which make use of other data apart from the information being communicated. In particular, we explored the capacity of VEs to communicate affective states, i.e. those aspects of communication concerned with emotional response, and discovered how agents within VEs can model and use affective states to enhance the realism of the VES. Moreover, we discussed the social intelligence that renders affective behaviors of software agents and its application to a collaborative learning system. We argued that socially appropriate affective behaviors would provide a new dimension for collaborative e-leaming systems.
