A Scalable Hierarchical Architecture for Large Scale Multi-User Virtual Environments

In this paper, we introduce a communication infrastructure based on using a hierarchical client-server model for facing the problem of Large Scale Collaborative Virtual Environments. Basically, we use a hierarchy of servers and, when the capacity of a server is reached, a new server is created as a son of the first one. The load is then distributed among the servers. We discuss and present the aspects of the proposed model and we also present efficient manners of solving problems inherent to client-server model. We specifically discuss techniques for grouping users, the allocation of users among servers, and definition of mixing and filtering operations. This paper also addressed the "shot in the crowd" problem, with a proposal of a solution