Revisiting the Scene-Graph-as-Bus Concept: Inter-networking Heterogeneous Applications Using glTF Fragments

While there are now many examples of successful collaborative mixed reality applications, each application uses its own custom networking framework and applications rarely inter-operate. To enable much larger-scale distributed systems, we will need inter-networking protocols that allow heterogeneous applications to exchange data. We demonstrate a proof of concept implementation that revisits the concept of using a scene-graph as a bus. That is, sharing low-level geometry and rendering information, rather than high-level semantic events. Our networking protocol uses glTF fragments and edits to express scene changes. We use the proof of concept to explore the potential to inter-network very different applications that are based on different underlying graphics engine technology.