Bringing people together-an infrastructure for shared virtual worlds on the Internet

VRML (the Virtual Reality Modeling Language) has brought 3D objects and virtual worlds to a large number of Internet users. While it provides a suitable basis for the platform independent description of virtual worlds, an appropriate network architecture required to realize shared virtual worlds on the Internet is still an open issue. In this paper we will review some basic network architectures for networked VR and introduce DWTP (the Distributed Worlds Transfer and communication Protocol). DWTP is an application layer protocol for shared virtual environments on the Internet. It provides a scalable network architecture for large-scale distributed virtual worlds. We will show how it is used within our current prototype to realize a distributed multi-user virtual environment.