Maximising concurrency and scalability in a consistent, causal, distributed virtual reality system, whilst minimising the effect of network delays

Roberts, D.J. and Sharkey, P. (1997) Maximising concurrency and scalability in a consistent, causal, distributed virtual reality system, whilst minimising the effect of network delays. In: Proceedings of IEEE 6th Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises. IEEE, pp. 161-166. ISBN 0-8186-7967-0 doi: 10.1109/ENABL.1997.630808

Abstract/Summary

The development of large scale virtual reality and simulation systems have been mostly driven by the DIS and HLA standards community. A number of issues are coming to light about the applicability of these standards, in their present state, to the support of general multi-user VR systems. This paper pinpoints four issues that must be readdressed before large scale virtual reality systems become accessible to a larger commercial and public domain: a reduction in the effects of network delays; scalable causal event delivery; update control; and scalable reliable communication. Each of these issues is tackled through a common theme of combining wall clock and causal time-related entity behaviour, knowledge of network delays and prediction of entity behaviour, that together overcome many of the effects of network delays.