MPEG-4 support to multiuser virtual environments

The few existing virtual reality distributed systems integrated to multimedia suffer from technical limitations on the number of users supported and on the presentation quality of the scenes. These limitations are due, among other things, to the slow progress of the VRML language to deal with multimedia integration. Today, the MPEG-4 standard is one of the most attractive alternative technologies to the development of multiuser virtual environments integrated to multimedia. The paper evaluates the current status of multimedia integration to virtual environments in the WWW and proposes a tool called SVRT-MM (Shared Virtual Reality Tool Integrated with Multimedia) that extends an existing MPEG-4 player to support multiuser. The article intends to be a contribution to the ongoing developments of the MPEG-4 standard related to multiuser support in 3D environments.