Network lag mitigation methods in collaborative distributed simulations

Abstract

One of the known problems with shared object manipulation in collaborative virtual environments (CVE) is the disruptive effect of network lag in collaboration sessions. It is widely recognized that delay and jitter cause significant problems for CVEs. Most solutions to this problem revolve around techniques to compensate for this lag at the networking level. More recently, the usage of visual cues indicating network lag to the user have shown to be effective. In this article we examine both approaches using a collaborative tele-haptic application, during which we also introduce a novel technique for decorator-based mitigation for closely-coupled tasks. We conclude that while both techniques can be effective, the combination of both will lead to best results