Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

Shohei Sugawara

Norihiko Matsuura

Hiroya Tanigawa

Gen Suzuki

Machio Moriuchi

Yasuhiro Nakajima

Hiroyuki Arita

Yoshio Nagashima

Yumi Murakami

The purpose is to provide a system and a method for 3-D shared virtual environment communication system to enable a plurality of users to share a common virtual environment so that real-time facial expressions of other users can be displayed on user's own terminal and voices heard. The system thus facilitate communications among the users in such cases as virtual conferencing environment. The method of operating the communication system is executed by computer application programs that contains a user information control section broadcasts information input from the facial expression input section , voice input section and motion information input section , to other user terminals through the network under the control of the network control section . The avatar information managing section , script control section , virtual environment control section and virtual environment generation section displays other users' avatar on user's own terminal.

Method and system for 3-D shared virtual environment display communication virtual conference and programs therefor

A plurality of terminals are connected to a server via a communication network and share a predetermined common virtual space. The terminals each send to the server the position coordinates of the viewing point and direction of eyes of its user in the virtual space, and the visual field image viewed from that viewing point is displayed on a display. Based on the position coordinates and direction of eyes of the avatar each of the other terminals received from each of the other terminals via the server, each terminal generates an avatar image in the specified direction and at the specified position and displays it in the visual field. The server is always supplied with the latest position information of the avatar from every terminal and, when the distance between two arbitrary avatars becomes smaller than a threshold value, connects speech channels of the two terminals corresponding to these avatars.

Virtual space apparatus with avatars and speech

Growing community of inventors

Yokosuka, Japan

Shohei Sugawara