Suitability of MPEG4's BIFS for development of collaborative virtual environments

Collaborative Virtual Environments provide the capability of remote users working together in a virtual reality simulation in order to accomplish a joint task. An application creating such an environment would make heavy use of 3-dimensional object descriptions and hence would require their efficient storage, transport and access. In this paper we will discuss the suitability and advantages of using the MPEG4 standard for storage, transport and access of 3-dimensional object descriptions.