Virtually Shared Displays and User Input Devices

This paper proposes making displays and input devices as first-class citizens in a networked system environment for collaborative applications. The paper describes a virtually shared model that enables users to use remote displays as extensions of their local displays and to allow multiple users to use multiple cursors and keyboards to input and control shared applications and their windows simultaneously. We have implemented a prototype system and deployed it to three DOE Fusion control rooms. The implementation performs well on today’s hardware and our user feedbacks show that such a paradigm can substantially improve information sharing.