A Description Library for Avatar-centric Communication Methods in 3D-MUVEs

Abstract

On the Internet many services of 3D multi-user virtual environments (3D-MUVEs) are already provided, however, they support only limited communication methods such as chatting, sharing avatars' gestures and so on. We consider that more avatar-centric metaphors are required for communication methods such as the use of tools by avatars, and touch among avatars as non-verbal communications. In this paper, we provide a description library for avatar-centric communication methods in our target platform, 3D-MUVEs on the Internet. We demonstrate the description capability of our library through the applications to proposed avatar-centric metaphors.