The basis of this book is the Multimedia and Virtual Worlds Workshop held in October 1993 at the University of Geneva. The book encapsulates the state of Swiss research in virtual reality and multimedia technology. It presents advanced research and surveys on image compression, HDTV, synthetic actors, synthetic TV, 3D copying, 3D interaction, virtual reality, electronic books, and architectural space.

The book consists of 15 papers of approximately 15 pages each. The papers contain attractive, meaningful figures, where appropriate, and most have comprehensive reference lists. Bound into the book are 17 full-color, glossy images of virtual architecture, virtual actors, and synthetic TV. The table of contents and index are complete and useful. Work addresses are provided for each of the authors.

The papers are “An Overview of Hypermedia and Multimedia Systems” (by H. Maurer), “Parallel Image Storage and Retrieval” (by R. Hersch and B. Krummenacher), “A Ternary Tree Representation of Generalized Digital Images” (by H. Bieri and D. Mayor), “An Overview of HDTV Systems” (by M. Kunt), “Progressive Image Transmission for Multimedia Applications” (by M. Durst), “WEBSs: An Electronic Book Shell with an Object-oriented Scripting Environment” (by J. Monnard and J. Pasquier-Boltuck), “Virtual Reality in Architecture” (by G. Schmitt), “Virtuality Builder II: On the Topic of 3D Interaction” (by J. F. Balaguer and E. Gobbetti), “The World of Virtual Actors” (by N. Magnenat Thalmann and D. Thalmann), “STV--Synthetic TV: From Laboratory Prototype to Production” (by A. Fellous), “Synchronization in Virtual Worlds” (by M. Papothomas, C. Breiteneder, S. Gibbs, and V. de Mey), “Software for Geometric Computation: The XYZ GeoBench and Program Library,” (by J. Nievergelt), “Three-dimensional Copying Using Surface Reconstruction from Tomography Slices” (by P. Stucki and A. Ghezal), “Interactive and Controlled Synthesis of 3D Irregular Shapes” (by L. Moccozet and P. Kalra), and “Some Developments about Ray Tracing” (by B. Peroche).

One of the outstanding attributes of this book is its readability for an English-speaking audience, or for any audience. Each chapter has been written, or edited, for the express purpose of conveying meaningful information. This book is recommended for all people who might have liked to be present at the conference. It should interest people involved in the production of virtual reality software and those who make decisions about investing in applications developed with these technologies.