Design and implementation of 3D interface for digital city

We have developed virtual space software as a 3D interface for the digital city. This software is intended to construct a new community in cyberspace in which several hundreds of agents with human appearance and several dozens of avatars interact by using video and voice in a virtual space with the same structure as the real world. Among these purposes, the virtual space is realized by reading the structural data (written in VRML) of the space, which has the same structure as a real city, into the 3D communication tool. The realism and ease of operation of the avatars and agents are improved by implementing walking with an animation technique, natural avoidance of others while walking in a crowded area, and reproduction of the spatial sound field in utterances. Hitherto, a high- performance computer has been assumed in realizing a 3D space with such sophisticated functions. However, the digital city should be designed so the general public can access it easily from the home computing environment. It is also desirable that the space can be shared simultaneously by as many persons as possible. For this purpose, the computer performance requirements and the network bandwidth for the interface should be kept as low as possible. In order to solve these problems, we developed an efficient sound field generation technique for a multiuser environment and implemented the system in the virtual space. Evaluations show that the proposed technique is effective in reducing the computer resources expended in virtual space software. (C) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.