Distributed design review in virtual environments

In large distributed corporations, distributed design review offers the potential for cost savings, reduced time to market, and improved efficiency. It also has the potential to improve the design process by enabling wider expertise to be incorporated in design reviews. This paper describes the integration of several components to enable distributed virtual design review in mixed multi-party, heterogeneous multi-site 2D and immersive 3D environments. The system provides higher layers of support for collaboration including avatars, high fidelity audio, and shared artifact manipulation. The system functions across several interface environments ranging from CAVEs to Walls to desktop workstations. At the center of the software architecture is the Human Integrating Virtual Environment (HIVE) [6], a collaboration infrastructure and toolset to support research and development of multi-user, geographically distributed, 2D and 3D shared applications. The HIVE functions with VisualEyes software for visualizing 3D data in virtual environments. We also describe in detail the configuration and lessons learned in a two site, heterogeneous multi-user demonstration of the system between HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California and GM R&D in Warren, Michigan.