Scale Virtual Worlds through Dynamic Load Balancing

Dynamic load balancing holds the potential to scale virtual worlds flexibly by dynamic allocation of hardware to match load. In this paper, we study the benefits and overheads of space based load partitioning, in particular, distributed binary space partitioning (BSP). Our evaluation is based on Open Simulator, a virtual world system compatible with Second Life® viewers. Our work reveals that although simple and effective, distributed BSP has several limitations and suffers from high overhead. We then analyze the fundamental reasons of these limitations. To overcome the limitations, we argue that it is necessary to break away from the simulator-centric architecture used in today's virtual worlds, and present potential new directions.