Using Pluggable Procedures and Ontology to Realize Semantic Virtual Environments 2.0

Abstract

Abstract\r\nAllowing users to design animation procedures and share their\r\ndesigns with other users is a crucial function for creating personalized\r\n3D avatar behaviors on multi-user virtual environments\r\n(MUVE’s). By describing the ontology of the virtual objects in the\r\nenvironment to animation procedures, we allow these procedures\r\nto create customized animations for an avatar to interact with the\r\nenvironment or other avatars. In this paper, we attempt to realize a\r\nsemantic virtual environment (SVE) in our MUVE system (called\r\nIMNET) with the concept of web 2.0 through three mechanisms:\r\ndynamical installation of animation procedures, ontology design\r\nof semantic description for virtual objects and avatars, and interaction-\r\noriented message delivery. Based on our demonstrative applications,\r\nwe have designed example semantics for the objects in the\r\nvirtual world by the use of ontology. We have used two application\r\nscenarios about automatic generation of navigation path and\r\ncasual interactions between users to illustrate the potential of creating\r\nsharable rich contents in a semantic virtual environment.