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Selected Readings in Vision and Graphics
edited by Luc Van Gool, Gábor Székely, Markus Gross, Bernt Schiele

Volume 31

Martin Andreas Näf,
blue-c API: Software Support for Collaborative Virtual Reality.
First edition 2004, 184 pages, € 64,00. ISBN 3-89649-957-2

This thesis presents the blue-c Application Programming Interface. The blue-c API provides support for collaborative work in virtual environments. As the major novelty of the system, the blue-c integrates tele-presence using a three-dimensional video representation of the remote user into an immersive projection environment, allowing to meet the other users in the virtual space. The blue-c API provides an easy-to-use interface to the software developer, hiding most of the complexity of the underlying system, but also providing access to low-level structures and control flow for the expert user. The blue-c API supports a wide range of display devices, from desktop systems to multi-projector CAVE environments, driven by either monolithic graphics machines as well as clustered rendering architectures. A special focus was put on supporting various media, including geometry, video, and audio.

Martin Näf received his MSc degree in Computer Science (Dipl. Informatik-Ing. ETH) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, in 1999. From 1999 to 2000 he worked as a research assistant at the High-Performance Computing Group at ETH. From 2000 to 2004 he has been a research assistant and Ph.D. student at the Computer Graphics Laboratory at ETH Zurich. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2004 for his work on the blue-c Application Programming Interface. Currently, Martin Näf is a Research Programmer at the Digital Design Studio of the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland.

Keywords: Virtual Reality, Collaborative VR, Multimedia, Tele-presence, 3D video, 3D audio, Real-time graphics, VR toolkit, Distance collaboration, Distributed scene graph, Virtuelle Realität, Kollaboratives VR, Tele-Präsenz, Echtzeit Grafik, Verteilter Szenegraph

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