REVIREN: Augmenting Virtual Environments with Personal Digital Assistants.

Schroder, R, M Bosma, A Cousins and G Marsden (2004) REVIREN: Augmenting Virtual Environments with Personal Digital Assistants.. In Proceedings South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists, pages 135-141, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Abstract

Our research group is currently embarked on building cheap display-based virtual environments. With the use of Personal Digital Assistants becoming more widespread and commonplace, there is a need to investigate ways of allowing them to integrate better with our computing environment. We feel that these devices' versatility make them ideal as alternative input/output mechanisms for Virtual Environments.
By reducing peripheral information and removing display widgets from the main screen, we aim to manage screen real-estate and thus avoid obscuring the user's view of the environment. Our system make use of a virtual shopping mall with various interactive elements designed to highlight the possibilities PDA-based control offers.