Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Paper Reading 12 - TwinSpace: an Infrastructure for Cross-Reality Team Spaces


Reference Information
TwinSpace: an Infrastructure for Cross-Reality Team Spaces
 - Derek F. Reilly, Hafez Rouzati, Andy Wu, Jee Yeon Hwang, Jeremy Brudvik, and W. Keith Edwards
 - UIST 2010, New York, New York

Summary
TwinSpace is a system that aids in interactive group work.  In other solutions, the creators explain that these do not include support for remote participants.  As in, they only work if all team members are within the same space.  The creators of TwinSpace set out to expand on this system by adding technology with virtual worlds to the mix.  They name this main idea as collaborative cross-reality, or CoXR.

A demonstration of all the parts of the system in use.
CoXR contains four main features: a communications layer, a common model, a mapping capability, and specialized virtual world clients.  The communications layer is made to connect the virtual space with the physical space.  The common model is designed to bring together devices and services from the virtual and physical realms.  The mapping functions work with connecting and synchronizing both worlds.  And the virtual world clients are designed to monitor the interactions between the two worlds.

The designers explain that current virtual world and smart room layouts do not meet the requirements for interactive group work.  However, they point out that the TwinSpace system they have made shows that these two worlds can be joined together to meet these needs.  They hope that the groundwork TwinSpace has laid out will help in the development of powerful cross-reality environments.

Discussion
The TwinSpace system seems like a pretty interesting idea.  I have never been in the workplace, so I am not fully aware of the needs of a team of individuals.  But, the presentation of the game system to demo the technology explained pretty well how TwinSpace can be used.  I didn’t touch on this in the summary, but it basically allowed individuals to move around in a virtual space and interact with it by having a top-down view on a tabletop and a screen showing the front view.  This made me think of multiple teams developing a game where the teams might be halfway across the world from each other.  If both teams could directly interact with the game environment at the same time, they could more easily communicate ideas.  While this could be great for other work environments, I think game developers could benefit greatly from this system.

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