---

Innovative input devices are no longer used just for games, propriety consoles and specific applications, they are also used in many distributed virtual environments, especially the so-called serious virtual environments. In this book a distributed, service based framework is presented to offer interaction interoperability that can support mapping between input devices and suitable application tasks given the attributes (device, applications, users, and interaction techniques) as well as the current user context without negatively impacting performances of large scale distributed environments. The mapping is dynamic and context sensitive taking into account the context dimensions of both the virtual and real planes. Another use of interaction interoperability is as a testbed for input devices, and interaction techniques making it possible to test reality based interfaces and interaction techniques with legacy applications. This book provides a description of how the framework provides these affordances and a discussion of motivations, goals and the addressed challenges.

---

Hussein Ahmed has a PhD in Computer Science and Applications from Virginia Tech. He has more than nine years of experience in the research and development of distributed web solutions. Hussein has worked in both academia and industry and his philosophy of perfect software is a simple, well designed architecture.

---