seamlessly integrated distributed shared virtual environments
Multi-user virtual environments implemented across the web allow many users to interact with the virtual world and each other in a seamless manner. The current standard for embedding virtual worlds in the Internet, VRML 2.0, provides links between these worlds, but it does not allow the user to see across these links before physically entering them. This paper describes the client-server design, implementation and experimental results for CurlSpace, a system that supports real-time visual interaction between many users and scalability in a shared virtual 3D environment such as the Internet. This system, developed using C++ and OpenGL, is based on using portals to connect different virtual environments (VE) in a way that visual connectivity between different VE will always be maintained.
vrml client-server portals distributed virtual environments