UCL Public COVEN Page

COVEN Sites | Current Work | Documents and Activities | Model | Miscellaneous

Important - For COVEN Project Members

UCL's COVEN project page has now moved to here . (COVEN Project Members Only)
For UCL people our local pages have now moved to here . (UCL Graphics Group Only)

COVEN Sites

Main project page

Coven Partners

UCL Current Work Packages

UCL main current activities are in the following work packages:

Activity	Outline
Act 3.6	Network evaluation of the Coven application. Requirements for support of collaborative VEs with audio, text and VR communcation.
Act 7.3	Extensions to standards in the Web3D arena.

UCL Lead Completed Work Packages

The following packages led by UCL have finished and are written up:

Activity	Outline	Reports
Act 2.9	Final Demonstrator. UCL is building a travel scenario involving both large city and intricate building models. This involves investigation of scalable rendering and interaction techniques, and of generation of city scenes from various data sources.	Deliverable 2.8a. See below for other upcoming public results of this package.
Act 7.2	Review of VRML and WWW techniques for COVEN. A report on the recent VRML97 standardisation effort and input made to that process.	Deliverable 7.2. See below for other public documents on VRML.
Act 3.2	Usability evaluation of the initial Coven demonstrators focussing on the particular issues of collaboration in a VE.	Deliverable 3.3. See below for other upcoming public results of this package.
Act 3.4	Usability evaluation of the online Coven.	Deliverable 3.5 Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D. See below for other upcoming public results of this package.
Act 4.3	Collaborative Interactive Techniques. Novel techniques for collaboration in VE, especially for spatial orientation/wayfinding tasks.	Deliverable 4.3. See below for other upcoming public results of this package.
Act 8.4	Specification and implementation of techniques for variable quality rendering. Includes dynamic level of detail and shadow algorithms.	Deliverable 8.4. See below for other upcoming public results of this package.

Other Completed Work Packages

UCL has been involved in the followed completed packages:

Activity	Outline	Reports
Act 3.6	Group Usage Evaluation of the Extended Applications.	Deliverable 3.7 Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, Part E. See below for other upcoming public results of this package.
Act 4.4	Integration of Interaction Techniques into the Applications.	Deliverable 4.4.See below for other upcoming public results of this package.
Act 2.7	Guidelines for Building CVE Applications.	Deliverable 2.6.

Documents and Activities

Papers

View Volume Culling Using a Probabilistic Caching Scheme Mel Slater, Yiorgos Chrysanthou , FIVE 96
Data Flow Languages for Immersive Virtual Environments Anthony Steed , BCS Virtual Environments on the Internet, WWW and Networks.
Incremental Update to Scenes Illuminated by Area Light Sources Yiorgos Chrysanthou and Mel Slater
Efficient Navigation Around Complex Virtual Environments Anthony Steed , to be presented at VRST97.
View Volume Culling Using a Probabilistic Caching Scheme Mel Slater and Yiorgos Chrysanthou, to be presented at VRST97
The Influence of Body Movement on Presence in Virtual Environments Mel Slater, Anthony Steed, John McCarthy and Francesco Marinelli , Human Factors 40(3) September 1998.
Measuring Presence through Expectation and Surprise Mel Slater, Anthony Steed, John McCarthy and Francesco Marinelli , submitted for publication.
Experiences with the Evaluation of CVE Applications Anthony Steed and Jolanda Tromp , CVE98.
Basdogan, C., Ho, C., Slater, M., Srinivasan, A., THe Role of Haptic Communication in Shared Virtual Environments, Proceedings of the Third PHAToM Users Group Workshop., Dedham, MA, Oct. 3-4
M. Slater, A. Sadagic, M. Usoh, R. Schroeder , Small Group Behaviour in a Virtual and Real Environment: A Comparative Study, 1^st International Workshop on Presence in Shared Virtual Environments, Martlesham, UK, June 98
M. Slater and A. Steed, A Virtual Presence Counter, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, In Press,
F. Maringelli, J. Mc Carthy, A. Steed, M. Slater and C. Umitam, Shifting Visual Attention in a Three Dimensional Space: evidence in favour of a dissociation between attentional systems operting in the proximal and distal space, Submitted for publication, ,
A.Steed, M.Slater, A.Sadagic, J.Tromp and A.Bullock, leadership and collaboration in shared virtual environments, IEEE Virtual Reality '99, Houston, Texas, March 99
Chih-Hao Ho, Cagatay Basdogan, Mel Slater, Nat Durlach, Mandayam A. Srinivasan, The Influence of Haptic Communication on the Sense of Being Together, 1^st International Workshop on Presence in Shared Virtual Environments, Martlesham, UK, June 98
Tromp, J., Steed, A., Frecon, E. Bullock, A., Sadagic, A., Slater, M. (1998) Small Group Behaviour in the COVEN Project, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 18(6), 53-63.
M. Slater, D.Pertaub and A.Steed, Public Speaking in Virtual Reality: Facing and Audience of Avatars, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 19(2), March/April 1999, p6-9.

Internal Reports

These may be available on request.

Navigation Techniques for Virtual Environments Anthony Steed
Collaboration in Very Large Scale Environments: Notes on Impressioninstic Representation and Rendering Mel Slater, Anthony Steed, Yiorgos Chrysanthou
Adding Shadows to Virtual Environments Yiorgos Chrysanthou
Travel Training Scenario: Outline, Requirements and Progress to Date Anthony Steed

Activities

VRST99 will be at UCL. COVEN is supporting the conference.
The VVECC Workshop The Impact of VR on Computer Graphics on VR (18 December 1997) was run here at UCL by COVEN project members.
UCL's Travel Rehearsel scenario was featured in a short piece on Virtual Tourism on London Tonight, November 1997.

Model

As part of the COVEN project, we are building a travel rehearsel scenario involving a journey from London Heathrow Airport to University College London. The aims of this are to prove the utility of collabortive virtual environments, explore the generation and support of very large models and to explore scalable rendering systems. You may download cut-down versions of this model in VRML1.0 and DIVE3.2 formats here

Some early snapshots of our UCL's travel scenario. (Click on the thumb nails for a larger version).

Some snapshots of work in progress on the London Traveller scenario. (Click on the thumb nails for a larger version).

Recent work on the final demonstrator. 16x10km model of London paged in using Holders. 1 - view over Canary Wharf. 2 - overview of model. 3 - Over Regents's Park looking towards Anthony'shouse. 4 - Cityviz tool looking SE over the city. Snapshots taken on an Impact.