View-rules and representations: a framework for dynamic control of multimedia in virtual environments

Folding multimedia capabilities into virtual environments is a key driver of future applications. However, providing flexible and, user-customizable solutions is problematic. We describe a framework, called AlphaOmega that enables designer/user definition and control of the representational aspects of objects used in applications. Powerful changes in an application´s interface and behavior can be achieved by such means. We show the relevance of this work to multimedia by giving concrete examples using a distance learning virtual environment called PERSYST