A method for compressing depth information for a three-dimensional virtual scene, comprising: at a computing device , recognizing a three-dimensional virtual scene including one or more locally-maintained virtual objects ; receiving , from a remote device , positioning information for one or more remotely-maintained virtual objects to be included in the three-dimensional virtual scene ; characterized in that : for a virtual view of the three-dimensional virtual scene having a virtual perspective , classifying different portions of the virtual view as belonging to one of a plurality of different occlusion classes, each of the plurality of different occlusion classes specifying an occlusion relationship between locally-maintained virtual objects and remotely-maintained virtual objects in the virtual view ; outputting a depth-compressed representation of the virtual view to the remote device , the depth-compressed representation indicating the occlusion class for each of the different portions of the virtual view ; where the occlusion class for each of the different portions of the virtual view is indicated in the depth-compressed representation using a different unique indicator for each of the plurality of different occlusion classes. at a computing device , recognizing a three-dimensional virtual scene including one or more locally-maintained virtual objects ; receiving , from a remote device , positioning information for one or more remotely-maintained virtual objects to be included in the three-dimensional virtual scene ; characterized in that : for a virtual view of the three-dimensional virtual scene having a virtual perspective , classifying different portions of the virtual view as belonging to one of a plurality of different occlusion classes, each of the plurality of different occlusion classes specifying an occlusion relationship between locally-maintained virtual objects and remotely-maintained virtual objects in the virtual view ; outputting a depth-compressed representation of the virtual view to the remote device , the depth-compressed representation indicating the occlusion class for each of the different portions of the virtual view ; where the occlusion class for each of the different portions of the virtual view is indicated in the depth-compressed representation using a different unique indicator for each of the plurality of different occlusion classes. for a virtual view of the three-dimensional virtual scene having a virtual perspective , classifying different portions of the virtual view as belonging to one of a plurality of different occlusion classes, each of the plurality of different occlusion classes specifying an occlusion relationship between locally-maintained virtual objects and remotely-maintained virtual objects in the virtual view ; outputting a depth-compressed representation of the virtual view to the remote device , the depth-compressed representation indicating the occlusion class for each of the different portions of the virtual view ; where the occlusion class for each of the different portions of the virtual view is indicated in the depth-compressed representation using a different unique indicator for each of the plurality of different occlusion classes. <EOS>