ABSTRACT
Interactive computing has evolved through the years from cryptic command-based interfaces to a collection of task-based applications to ecologically valid immersive environments, each advance dissolving more of the barrier between users and their desired actions. Current virtual environments applications are primarily intriguing visual and auditory experiences, with a smaller number incorporating additional sensory modalities, such as haptics and smell. These worlds are driven by hardware, which provides the hosting platform and multimodal presentation, allows for physical interaction, and tracks the whereabouts of users as they traverse the virtual world and software to model and generate the virtual world and their autonomous agents and support communication networks that link multiple users. With the rapidly advancing ability to generate complex and large-scale virtual worlds, hardware advances in multimodal input/output (I/O) devices, tracking systems, and interaction techniques are needed to support generation of increasingly engaging virtual worlds.
