Patent ID: 8140698

Claim:
A method for efficient transmission of digital content to clients via a computer network, the digital content associated with a virtual environment, comprising the steps of: determining non-overlapping portions of the digital content to be transmitted to the clients; determining overlapping portions of the digital content to be transmitted to the clients; scheduling transmission of the non-overlapping and overlapping portions of the digital content so that the non-overlapping and overlapping portions of the digital content are sent in a priority manner, wherein the scheduling includes prioritizing a multicast transmission of high priority portions of the overlapping portions of the digital content according to a per-client score and a per-group score, wherein the per-group score is determined for the overlapping portions of the digital content that overlap in respective visual domains of a multicast group of the clients and is determined from the per-client scores of the multicast group of the clients, and prioritizing a unicast transmission of the non-overlapping portions and low priority portions of the overlapping portions based on the according to a per-client score; and transmitting the portions of the digital content to the clients in accordance with the schedule to enable scenes from the virtual environment to be rendered.