Visibility-based interest management in collaborative virtual environments

One of the challenges facing developers of large-scale and content-rich Collaborative Virtual Environments is the lack of bandwidth to support the exchange of information between participants. It is usually not feasible for all participants to receive all the data produced by all other participants. It is therefore necessary to filter out some of such data for every user according to their interest. This paper presents an interest management mechanism based on each user's visibility of others. Its main features include occlusion awareness and visibility-based filtering, no need for a server and renderer-based visibility calculation.

[1]  Thomas A. Funkhouser,et al.  RING: a client-server system for multi-user virtual environments , 1995, I3D '95.

[2]  Steve Pettifer,et al.  DEVA3: architecture for a large-scale distributed virtual reality system , 2000, VRST '00.

[3]  Jauvane C. de Oliveira,et al.  VELVET: An Adaptive Hybrid Architecture for Very Large Virtual Environments , 2002, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[4]  Christer Carlsson,et al.  DIVE - A platform for multi-user virtual environments , 1993, Comput. Graph..

[5]  Richard C. Waters,et al.  Locales and beacons: efficient and precise support for large multi-user virtual environments , 1996, Proceedings of the IEEE 1996 Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium.

[6]  Michael Zyda,et al.  NPSNET:A Network Software Architecture for LargeScale Virtual Environments , 1994, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[7]  Tolga Capin,et al.  Networking Data for Virtual Humans , 2001 .

[8]  Steve Pettifer,et al.  DEVA3: Architecture for a Large Scale Virtual Reality System , 2000 .

[9]  Steve Benford,et al.  MASSIVE: a distributed virtual reality system incorporating spatial trading , 1995, Proceedings of 15th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.

[10]  Tolga Capin,et al.  Avatars in Networked Virtual Environments , 1999 .

[11]  Steve Pettifer,et al.  A Framework for Optimising Network Usage for Plausible Distributed Virtual Environments , 2001, Virtual Reality: Cognitive Foundations, Technological Issues & Philosophical Implications.

[12]  Olof Hagsand,et al.  Interactive Multiuser VEs in the DIVE System , 1996, IEEE Multim..