Patent ID: 8812475

Claim:
A system for facilitating object search in a virtual world environment including a plurality of objects, each object being defined by a plurality of attributes, the system comprising: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: select, via user input, a set of first object attributes on which to perform the search; define for each first object attribute a desired value or a range of desired values; perform the search selecting a set of objects according to the user input thereby forming selected objects; detetermine a relevance factor by perform a similarity comparison between the set of first object attributes and the plurality of attributes of each of the selected objects; and present the selected objects a scaled down three-dimensional visual representation, scaled by a scale factor, showing the user's position and a location for the selected objects within the virtual world, wherein the selected objects are shown using x, y, and z coordinates from the user's position, wherein the scale factor of the scaled down three-dimensional visual representation is based on a distance between the user's position and a farthest object of the selected objects, and wherein the scale factor is adjusted over a plurality of queries so that each scaled down three-dimensional visual representation utilizes a largest scale factor from the plurality of queries.