Three-tiered interest management for large-scale virtual environments

Abstract

As virtual environments have grown in size, increasing attention is being brought to the issue of filtering data that is of no interest to a given client. This filtering is known as interest management. Typically, interest management is thought of as a one step process: data flows in from the network, and either is rejected or accepted. This paper outlines a three-tiered approach to interest management, utilizing dynamic multicast group assignment based on a loadbalanced octree design. Initial prototyping suggests that it is possible to create virtual environments with the number of entities interacting in the environment at least an order of magnitude larger than previously demonstrated. © 1998 ACM.