Methods and Systems to Connect People for Virtual Meeting in Virtual Reality

• US 20080263460A1
• Filed: 04/20/2007
• Published: 10/23/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 04/20/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: YellowPages.com LLC (Mudrick Capital Management LP)
• Original Assignee: UTBK, Inc.
• Inventors: HIRSON, Ron, FABER, Scott, ALTBERG, Ebbe, MANCA, Paul G., YANG, Virginia Hong-Jia, VAN DER LINDEN, Sean, LYON, Ben Harris
• Application Number:
  US11/738,364
• Publication Number:
  US 20080263460A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/757
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

Methods and systems for connecting people for real time communications in a virtual reality environment. One embodiment includes: a virtual reality server to host a virtual reality world; a web server to provide an advertisement to a customer, the advertisement including a reference to a meeting with an advertiser of the advertisement in the virtual reality world, a selection of the reference from the customer to cause the virtual reality server to teleport at least one avatar to a meeting location in the virtual reality world; a session border controller to interface with a packet switched network; and one or more telecommunication servers coupled to the session border controller to connect the customer to the advertiser of the advertisement for real time communications in response to the customer selecting the advertisement. In one embodiment, the advertiser of the advertisement is charged an advertisement fee per completion of the teleporting.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

providing an advertisement to a customer, the advertisement including a reference to a meeting in a virtual reality world with an advertiser of the advertisement; and

in response to the customer selecting the reference, teleporting at least one avatar to a meeting location in the virtual reality world;

wherein the advertiser of the advertisement is charged an advertisement fee in response to the teleporting of at least one avatar to the meeting location.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the virtual reality world is three dimensional;

and the virtual reality world is presented to residents of the virtual reality world based on respective view points of residents in the virtual reality world.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein at the meeting location the virtual reality world comprises a portion of a reality world captured via a plurality of cameras.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

performing image morphing or view morphing on video images obtained from the plurality of cameras to present the virtual reality world to the customer.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the teleporting comprises:

teleporting an avatar representing the customer to the meeting location; and

teleporting an avatar representing the advertiser to the meeting location.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the teleporting comprises:

in response to the customer selecting the reference, determining a location of an avatar corresponding to the advertiser in the virtual reality world; and

teleporting an avatar corresponding to the customer to the meeting location determined according to the location of the avatar corresponding to the advertiser.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the teleporting comprises:

in response to the customer selecting the reference, determining a location of a customer avatar in the virtual reality world; and

teleporting an advertiser avatar to a vicinity of the location of the customer avatar.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the teleporting comprises:

after the customer selecting the reference, receiving the meeting location from the advertiser; and

teleporting an avatar of the customer to the meeting location.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

a connection provider assigning an avatar to the customer or the advertiser; and

responsive to the customer selecting the reference, determining a location of the assigned avatar in the virtual reality world to determine the meeting location.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the advertisement is presented outside the virtual reality world;

and the method further comprises;

responsive to the customer selecting the reference, assigning an avatar to the customer; and

teleporting the avatar assigned to the customer to the meeting location for a virtual meeting with an advertiser avatar operated by the advertiser.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

after the virtual meeting, reassigning the customer avatar to a second customer in response to the second customer selecting an advertisement.

12. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

dynamically associating information specified by the advertiser about the customer with the customer avatar, the information being specified by the advertiser prior to the assigning of the avatar to the customer.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

providing at least a portion of control of the customer avatar to the advertiser.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

responsive to a selection of the advertisement by the customer, establishing a telephonic connection between the customer and the advertiser.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the telephonic connection is established prior to the teleporting of at least one avatar to the meeting location in the virtual reality world.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the establishing of the telephone connection comprises:

a connection provider establishing a first Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connection to connect to the customer;

the connection provider establishing a second Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connection to connect to the advertiser; and

bridging the first and second VoIP connections to connect the customer and the advertiser.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the bridging of the first and second VoIP connections comprises establishing a media connection to connect the customer and the advertiser;

and wherein the media connection does not go through the media connection.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

a connection provider interfacing between a virtual reality server and the customer; and

the connection provider selectively modifying a scene presented by the virtual reality server to the customer.

19. A machine readable media embodying instructions, the instructions causing a machine to perform a method, the method comprising:

providing an advertisement to a customer, the advertisement including a reference to a meeting in a virtual reality world with an advertiser of the advertisement; and

in response to the customer selecting the reference, teleporting at least one avatar to a meeting location in the virtual reality world;

wherein the advertiser of the advertisement is charged an advertisement fee in response to the teleporting of at least one avatar to the meeting location.

20. A data processing system, comprising:

a virtual reality server to host a virtual reality world;

a web server to provide an advertisement to a customer, the advertisement including a reference to a meeting with an advertiser of the advertisement in the virtual reality world, a selection of the reference from the customer to cause the virtual reality server to teleport at least one avatar to a meeting location in the virtual reality world;

a session border controller to interface with a packet switched network; and

one or more telecommunication servers coupled to the session border controller to connect the customer to the advertiser of the advertisement for real time communications in response to the customer selecting the advertisement;

wherein the advertiser of the advertisement is charged an advertisement fee per completion of the teleporting of the at least one avatar to the meeting location.