An Extensible Event-Based Infrastructure for Networked Virtual Worlds

Abstract

Many VR platforms emphasize extensibility to support as wide a range of applications as possible. The current trend is to move this extensibility to lower levels of the system to support extensibility of infrastructure mechanisms such as networking protocols. This kind of extensibility allows the runtime of the virtual environment system to evolve even while the system is running. This paper presents a new virtual environment platform that allows multiple infrastructure mechanisms to be added to and coexist within the running system, with different elements of the virtual world using different mechanisms. This allows the virtual environment system to efficiently support a wider range of applications by, for example, having only certain virtual objects use conservative consistency and persistence. It can also optimize the performance of the CVE by tailoring the infrastructure mechanisms according to the different roles played by different objects in the virtual environment.