Controlling virtual world by the real world devices with an MPEG-V framework

Abstract

The recent online networked virtual worlds such as SecondLife, World of Warcraft and Lineage have been increasingly popular. A life-scale virtual world presentation and the intuitive interaction between the users and the virtual worlds would provide more natural and immersive experience for users. The emergence of novel interaction technologies such as sensing the facial expression and the motion of the users and the real world environments could be used to provide a strong connection between them. For the wide acceptance and use of the virtual world, a various type of novel interaction devices should have a unified interaction formats between the real world and the virtual world and interoperability among virtual worlds. Thus, MPEG-V Media Context and Control (ISO/IEC 23005) standardizes such connecting information. The paper provides an overview and its usage example of MPEG-V from the real world to the virtual world (R2V) on interfaces for controlling avatars and virtual objects in the virtual world by the real world devices. In particular, we investigate how the MPEG-V framework can be applied for the facial animation of an avatar in various types of virtual worlds.