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MPEG-V : bridging the virtual and real world
Yoon K., Kim S., Han J., Han S., Preda M., Academic Press, London, UK, 2015. 210 pp. Type: Book (978-0-124201-40-8)
Date Reviewed: Jun 23 2016

Virtual and augmented reality, such as multiple sensorial media and programmable actuators, has become widespread in recent years. From a technological side, this opens a new spectrum of opportunities at the application level, but also brings up several issues regarding standardization, entity description using extensible languages, authoring, mapping between devices, and interfacing, among several others. These issues were mainly addressed in a rather opportunistic way by the major players in the entertainment industry, raising the risk of incompatibilities and inconsistencies among platforms. The appearance of MPEG-V as a set of standards for media context and control provides the architecture and specifies the related data models that make interoperable multimedia and multimodal communication possible, both between virtual worlds and between virtual and real worlds.

This book covers some aspects of the MPEG-V standard, addressing the fundamentals and implementation details of the technology and the associated applications, both actual and potential. Each chapter covers a different aspect of the standard, including an introductory section, examples, applications, a conclusion section, and references. In this way, the book serves both as introductory material for understanding the standard and its practical side, and as a reference manual for delving deeper into the implementation details.

The book starts with an introductory section that covers introductory material on the MPEG-V standard, including virtual worlds, multiple sensorial media, the history of the standard, and the overall organization of the description. A presentation of sensory effect description language (SEDL) follows, covering the vocabulary and data formats, and its role in adding sensorial effects to media content. The basics on interfacing with sensors and actuators are then presented, including interaction information descriptor language, data formats for effect creation using actuators and for sensing information using sensors, and command creation. The authors also cover the most relevant parts of the standard on description languages and vocabularies, including control information description language, device and sensor description vocabularies, and sensory effect and adaptation preference vocabularies.

Valuable details on the interoperability issues among virtual worlds and among virtual and real worlds are provided, including virtual world objects and avatars, metadata, and related topics. This is valuable because the topic is a major issue in developing virtual and augmented reality applications. The book also provides reference and conformance tools for developers who need to interface with devices using the MPEG-V standard. These include common objects and methods, classification schemata, reference software, conformance testing, and binary representations. These aspects make this book a very accessible and helpful source for software development.

The book concludes with a panorama of the applications of the standard, including key aspects of the information adaptation and exchange between virtual and real worlds. A list of term definitions and abbreviations is provided as an appendix. A companion website provides additional examples, Extensible Markup Language (XML) files with schemata of implementation details, examples of applications, and source code from the reference software.

The book is highly recommended for anyone who needs to know about implementation details of the MPEG-V standard for the development of applications or systems, the research on new technology and services related to sensorial media, or the synchronization of virtual and real worlds. The contents are well structured to serve as both an overall introduction and a specific source of information required for developers. Useful examples that illustrate applications are provided. The fact that the authors were instrumental in the development of MPEG-V makes the contents and recommendations in the book even more valuable.

Reviewer:  C. Delrieux Review #: CR144527 (1609-0631)
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Data Compaction And Compression (E.4 ... )
 
 
Artificial, Augmented, And Virtual Realities (H.5.1 ... )
 
 
Virtual Reality (I.3.7 ... )
 
 
Compression (Coding) (I.4.2 )
 
 
Multimedia Information Systems (H.5.1 )
 
 
Three-Dimensional Graphics And Realism (I.3.7 )
 
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