Abstract: The purpose is to provide a system and a method for 3-D shared virtual environment communication system to enable a plurality of users to share a common virtual environment so that real-time facial expressions of other users can be displayed on user's own terminal and voices heard. The system thus facilitate communications among the users in such cases as virtual conferencing environment. The method of operating the communication system is executed by computer application programs that contains a user information control section 102 broadcasts information input from the facial expression input section 103, voice input section 104 and motion information input section 105, to other user terminals through the network 30 under the control of the network control section 101. The avatar information managing section 107, script control section 108, virtual environment control section 109 and virtual environment generation section 110 displays other users' avatar on user's own terminal.

Abstract: A plurality of terminals are connected to a server via a communication network and share a predetermined common virtual space. The terminals each send to the server the position coordinates of the viewing point and direction of eyes of its user in the virtual space, and the visual field image viewed from that viewing point is displayed on a display. Based on the position coordinates and direction of eyes of the avatar each of the other terminals received from each of the other terminals via the server, each terminal generates an avatar image in the specified direction and at the specified position and displays it in the visual field. The server is always supplied with the latest position information of the avatar from every terminal and, when the distance between two arbitrary avatars becomes smaller than a threshold value, connects speech channels of the two terminals corresponding to these avatars.