Lessons from research on interaction with virtual environments

Nowadays, virtual environments provide great potential for new applications. However, the management and interaction with virtual environments raises new open problems. In this sense, this paper discusses important ideas and findings from research on interaction with virtual environments and virtual agents which we think are relevant for the design of successful virtual environments. More concretely, the paper discusses three aspects which are the representation of virtual environments, navigation support and addition of life to the environments. For each theme we introduce and discuss relevant work. In the view of the work discussed, we also provide recommendations to guide the design and development of virtual environments.