17 research outputs found
An architecture for integrating learning object repository resources into web videoconference services
Reusing Learning Objects saves time and reduce development costs. Hence, achieving their interoperability in multiple contexts is essential when creating a Learning Object Repository. On the other hand, novel web videoconference services are available due to technological advancements. Several benefits can be gained by integrating Learning Objects into these services. For instance, they can allow sharing, co-viewing and synchronized co-browsing of these resources at the same time that provide real time communication. However, several efforts need to be undertaken to achieve the interoperability with these systems. In this paper, we propose a model to integrate the resources of the Learning Object Repositories into web videoconference services. The experience of applying this model in a real e-Learning scenario achieving interoperability with two different web videoconference services is also described
Real-time cheat-free gaming on the basis of time-stamp service
A cheat-proof protocol for real-time gaming is proposed under
the assumption that time-stamp servers issue serially numbered
time stamps honestly and are available near every player, i.e.,
they exist everywhere in the Internet. With this protocol, each
player sends its action to the other player and also sends its hash
to the nearest time-stamp server. The time-stamp server sends the
signed hash with the time and a serial number back to the player.
The actions are checked to verify that they are compatible with
the hashes, and the signed hashes are checked to verify that they
have the correct time and the serial numbers are contiguous. The
only latency in this protocol is the travel time of the packet from
one player to another. In comparison with other existing
protocols, we confirm that the proposed protocol is as fast as and
more secure than the fair synchronization protocol, the fastest
existing protoco
Enabling rapid and cost-effective creation of massive pervasive games in very unstable environments
Pervasive gaming is a new form of multimedia entertainment that extends the traditional computer gaming experience out into the real world. Through a combination of personal devices, positioning systems and other sensors, combined with wireless networking, a pervasive game can respond to player's movements and context and enable them to communicate with a game engine and other players. We review our recent deployment examples of pervasive games in order to explain their distinctive characteristics as wireless ad-hoc networking applications. We then identify the network support challenges of scaling pervasive games to include potentially mass numbers of players across extremely heterogeneous and unreliable networks. We propose a P2P overlay capable of storing large amount of game related data, which is the key to combating the loss of coverage and potential dishonesty of players. The proposed protocol decreases the deployment costs of the gaming infrastructure by self organization and utilizing storage space of users' devices. We demonstrate scalability and increased availability of data offered by the proposed protocol in simulation based evaluatio
Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments
The field of shared virtual environments, which also
encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a
system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model
Cheat-proof playout for centralized and distributed online games
We explore exploits possible for cheating in real-time, multiplayer games for both client-server and distributed, serverless architectures. We offer the first formalization of cheating in online games and propose an initial set of strong solutions. We propose a protocol that has provable anti-cheating guarantees, but suffers a performance penalty. We then develop an extended version of this protocol, called asynchronous synchronization, which avoids the penalty, is serverless, offers provable anti-cheating guarantees, is robust in the face of packet loss, and provides for significantly increased communication performance. This technique is applicable to common game features as well as clustering and cell-based techniques for massively multiplayer games. Our performance claims are backed by analysis using a simulation based on real game traces. I