Non-verbal information processing in virtual environments

Virtual environments are interactive and immersive merging of several media consisting of mainly 3D graphics, sound, touch, and smell. This chapter describes recent efforts in human animation, selfguided synthetic actors and camera-based virtual environments. We explore the usefulness of the sense of touch experiments. Virtual environments provide a common platform for merging image and 3D data seamlessly. We summarize our research in this area and identify future directions for merging the participant's 3D environment with the 3D environment of the virtual world. We also identify applications where the sense of smell and touch can provide useful cues to the participant. The following are the sub-topics: