Video avatar: embedded video for collaborative virtual environment

This paper proposes the video avatar, an avatar with embedded video of the human body in a collaborative virtual environment. The video avatar enables visual communication between avatars. The video avatar has three features for enhancing visual communication. The target object function and the comment function enhance the gesture of the avatar. These functions integrate the embedded video and the virtual objects in the virtual space. The multiple video mechanism enhances the identification of the avatar. This mechanism displays the embedded video with a three-dimensional figure. This paper also describes the prototype system of the video avatar and our experience in the exhibition. Our experience shows that the visual communication provided by the video avatar is effective for guiding the user in the large-scaled virtual space