Result: A Migration Mechanism to Manage Network Troubles while Interacting within Collaborative Virtual Environments

Real time collaborative interactions within CVEs rely on the low latency offered by high speed networks. When low level network troubles occur during a collaborative session, participants of networked collaborative virtual environments can suffer from misunderstanding weird behavior of some objects of the virtual universe. We want to make such a virtual world easier to understand by using some graphic visualizations in such a way that the users become aware of these problems. It is a kind of augmentation of the Virtual Environment thanks to dedicated 3D metaphors associated to some objects of the virtual environment. We also want to allow users to work while these troubles occur, maybe with only restricted interaction possibilities, by making some interactive objects migrate onto the same site than the user who wants to interact with them. This is why we present then how two independent mechanisms may be coupled together for a better management and awareness of network troubles while interacting within a networked collaborative virtual environment: an awareness system that visualizes, through special metaphors, the existence of a network trouble as strong delay or disconnection; and a virtual object migration system that allows the migration of an object from one site to another to ensure a non interrupted manipulation in case of network troubles.