Patent ID: 8363051

Claim:
A computer implemented method for generating a non-real-time image snapshot in a virtual world, the computer implemented method comprising: receiving at a graphics rendering system, a scene description from a server, wherein the graphics rendering system is separate from the server and separate from a client data processing system; retrieving with the graphics rendering system a first set of graphics from a visual database, wherein the visual database contains both the first set of graphics and a second set of graphics, wherein the second set of graphics are utilized to render the virtual world at a virtual world client application that is executing on the client data processing system, and wherein the first set of graphics are not utilized by either the virtual world client application or the server in rendering the virtual world in real time, and further wherein the first set of graphics are high fidelity graphics and the second set of graphics are low fidelity graphics; rendering by the graphics rendering system the non-real-time image snapshot from the first set of graphics and the scene description; processing with the graphics rendering system the non-real-time image snapshot into the desired format; and delivering by a processor the non-real-time image snapshot to a client application.