12,198 research outputs found
Experimental study and modelling of Networked Virtual Environment server traffic
The paradigm of virtual world environment arises
as an useful tool in diverse fields such as e-Health or education,
where they provide a new way of communication and interaction
with end users. Networking capabilities play an important role
in these systems, which motivates the study and understanding
of the gaming network traffic. The present work focuses on Open
Wonderland, a system that provides the basis for the development
of Networked Virtual Environments with educational or health
purposes. The goal of this paper is defining a testing environment
and modelling the behaviour of the outgoing network traffic at
the server side.Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo AAL-010000-2012-10Ministerio de Ciencia e InnovaciĂłn TEC2009-10639-C04-0
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
Platform Competition as Network Contestability
Recent research in industrial organisation has investigated the essential
place that middlemen have in the networks that make up our global economy. In
this paper we attempt to understand how such middlemen compete with each other
through a game theoretic analysis using novel techniques from decision-making
under ambiguity. We model a purposely abstract and reduced model of one
middleman who pro- vides a two-sided platform, mediating surplus-creating
interactions between two users. The middleman evaluates uncertain outcomes
under positional ambiguity, taking into account the possibility of the
emergence of an alternative middleman offering intermediary services to the two
users. Surprisingly, we find many situations in which the middleman will
purposely extract maximal gains from her position. Only if there is relatively
low probability of devastating loss of business under competition, the
middleman will adopt a more competitive attitude and extract less from her
position.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure
Dynamic Hybrid Strategy Models for Networked Mulitplayer Games
Two of the primary factors in the development of
networked multiplayer computer games are network
latency and network bandwidth. Reducing the effects of
network latency helps maintain game-state fidelity,
while reducing network bandwidth usage increases the
scalability of the game to support more players. The
current technique to address these issues is to have each
player locally simulate remote objects (e.g. other
players). This is known as dead reckoning. Provided the
local simulations are accurate to within a given
tolerance, dead reckoning reduces the amount of
information required to be transmitted between players.
This paper presents an extension to the recently
proposed Hybrid Strategy Model (HSM) technique,
known as the Dynamic Hybrid Strategy Model
(DHSM). By dynamically switching between models of
user behaviour, the DHSM attempts to improve the
prediction capability of the local simulations, allowing
them to stay within a given tolerance for a longer
amount of time. This can lead to further reductions in
the amount of information required to be transmitted.
Presented results for the case of a simple first-person
shooter (FPS) game demonstrate the validity of the
DHSM approach over dead reckoning, leading to a
reduction in the number of state update packets sent and
indicating significant potential for network traffic
reduction in various multiplayer games/simulations
Modelling virtual urban environments
In this paper, we explore the way in which virtual reality (VR) systems are being broadened to encompass a wide array of virtual worlds, many of which have immediate applicability to understanding urban issues through geocomputation. Wesketch distinctions between immersive, semi-immersive and remote environments in which single and multiple users interact in a variety of ways. We show how suchenvironments might be modelled in terms of ways of navigating within, processes of decision-making which link users to one another, analytic functions that users have to make sense of the environment, and functions through which users can manipulate, change, or design their world. We illustrate these ideas using four exemplars that we have under construction: a multi-user internet GIS for Londonwith extensive links to 3-d, video, text and related media, an exploration of optimal retail location using a semi-immersive visualisation in which experts can explore such problems, a virtual urban world in which remote users as avatars can manipulate urban designs, and an approach to simulating such virtual worlds through morphological modelling based on the digital record of the entire decision-making process through which such worlds are built
- …