September 2001:               suggested link Virtually There A recent article by Jaron Lanier published in Scientific American "Three-dimensional tele-immersion may eventually bring the world to your desk"

Recent articles on tele-immersion
published in Scientifc American, both in
the magazine and on their website at
sciam.com:

Virtually There
by Jaron Lanier

Three-dimensional tele-immersion may
eventually bring the world to your desk

"Like many researchers, I am a frequent but reluctant user of videoconferencing.
Human interaction has both verbal and nonverbal elements, and videoconferencing
seems precisely configured to confound the nonverbal ones. It is impossible to make
eye contact properly, for instance, in today's videoconferencing systems, because
the camera and the display screen cannot be in the same spot. This usually leads to
a deadened and formal affect in interactions, eye contact being a nearly ubiquitous
subconscious method of affirming trust. Furthermore, participants aren't able to
establish a sense of position relative to one another and therefore have no clear way
to direct attention, approval or disapproval."


Other related links . . .

Tele-Immersion

"What is tele-immersion?

Tele-immersion enables users at geographically distributed sites to collaborate
in real time in a shared, simulated, hybrid environment as if they were in the
same physical room.

It is the ultimate synthesis of media technologies:

* 3D environment scanning,
* projective and display technologies,
* tracking technologies,
* audio technologies,
* robotics and haptics,

and powerful networking. The considerable requirements for tele-immersion
system, such as high bandwidth, low latency and low latency variation (jitter),
make it one of the most challenging net applications. This application is therefore
considered to be an ideal driver for the research agendas of the Internet2 community."