A Peer-To-Peer platform for simulating distributed virtual environments

The current expansion of multi-player online games has promoted the growth of large scale distributed virtual environments (DVEs). In these systems, peer-to-peer architectures have been proved as an efficient scheme for supporting massively multi-player applications. In order to research on this type of architecture, stand-alone simulators do not take into account inconsistencies due to network latency, and it is necessary to develop a distributed tool that allows to simulate large-scale DVEs in an efficient way. In this paper, we propose a distributed platform for simulating the behavior of peer-to-peer DVEs. This simulator is implemented following a modular architecture. It is capable of providing the main performance metrics in distributed systems, and it contains all the elements involved in real DVE simulations like the awareness method and the graphic interface. As a result, this tool can be used in real simulations of peer-to-peer DVEs, becoming an invaluable tool for capturing the behavior of this kind of systems.