Patent ID: 8495492

Claim:
A system comprising: one or more presentation applications, each presentation application operable to provide a respective presentation output, wherein the presentation output is configured to be displayed or projected; a plurality of augmentation and presentation control (iAPC) modules operable to provide user augmentations of the presentation output, the user augmentations being associated with the presentation output without modifying the presentation output, wherein each iAPC includes a respective remote virtual frame buffer each virtual frame buffer hosting one of the presentation threads from the one or more presentation applications, wherein the iAPC provides an augmentation user interface to users having permission to augment the presentation output as a separate layer over a presented augmentation layer and the presentation output; one or more distributed augmentation and presentation management (DAPm) modules operable to separately manage augmentations from the respective presentation output received from the plurality of iAPC modules, wherein the DAPm modules each include one or more virtual frame buffers such that the augmentations are separately maintained in one or more augmentation layers distinct from the presentation output received from the one or more presentation applications and to provide an augmented presentation output, where the augmented presentation output provides synchronous presentation of the augmentations and the presentation output; and one or more display devices for presenting the augmented presentation output, wherein each of the one or more display devices is coupled to one or more iAPC modules, and wherein the iAPC modules receive the augmented presentation output from one or more DAPm modules.