Patent ID: 7537523

Claim:
A method comprising: an environment server selecting a sub-set of entities from a set of entities in a virtual environment as being of interest to a group of characters comprising at least two characters in the virtual environment, the sub-set of entities being separate from the characters of the group of characters and each character of the group having a position in the virtual environment described by an x coordinate and a y coordinate, wherein the environment server selecting an entity as being of interest to the group of characters comprises: the environment server determining an x coordinate and a y coordinate for a position of a group center for the group, the x coordinate for the group center being determined by averaging the x coordinates of the positions of all of the characters of the group and the y coordinate for the group center being determined by averaging the y coordinates of the positions of all of the characters of the group, the position of the group center being different from the positions of all of the characters of the group; the environment server determining a distance between the position of the entity in the virtual environment and the group center; and the environment server selecting the entity as being of interest to the group of characters if the determined distance is less than a threshold distance; and the environment server transmitting a set of messages to clients corresponding to the characters of the group to convey information about the sub-set of entities.