Spotlight Interest Management for Distributed Virtual Environments

Abstract

This paper presents a novel refinement to visual attention-based interest management in distributed virtual environments (VEs). It is suggested that in the context of a desktop VE where only limited immersion occurs, using proximity in virtual space as a primary measure of relevance may be less effective than considering the characteristics of visual interaction with the two-dimensional display. The method seeks to utilise a spotlight model of human attention in place of a proximity measure, capable of giving extremely distant clients near the centre of the display priority. In order to evaluate the technique, a series of user experiments are described which seek to study the participant's ability to detect change between techniques in a proprietary collaborative virtual environment. Two groups of users are shown to exhibit a blind preference for the spotlight method, and failed to detect a significant change when available bandwidth was reduced using this approach. The technique may be integrated alongside existing saliency-based interest management paradigms as an alternative to the distance-based factor.