RAVITAS: REALISTIC VOICE CHAT FRAMEWORK FOR COOPERATIVE VIRTUAL SPACES (WedAmOR6)

Author(s) : Keiichi Yasumoto (Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan) Klara Nahrstedt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States of America)

Abstract : In this paper, we propose a framework for realistic voice chat among avatars in a virtual space. To reproduce realistic situations in an actual shared space, we emulate cocktail party effect in a virtual space. For the purpose, our framework automatically controls each avatar's group membership so that avatars can hear the voices from interesting avatars more clearly. In order to accommodate arbitrary number of avatars in a virtual space, a virtual space is divided into multiple sub-spaces so that they are managed by multiple user nodes. Voice stream is exchanged directly among user nodes through an overlay network. Through experiments, we have shown that the proposed framework achieves realistic voice chat among avatars.

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