VESIR-6: Virtual environment supporting multi-user interaction over IPv6

Virtual environments (VEs) are interactive computer simulations that immerse users in an alternate reality. Multi-user VE applications simulate the experience of real-time interaction among multiple users in a shared three-dimensional (3D) virtual world. The Internet has a growing importance as a communication medium for presenting multi-user VEs and interaction among distributed VEs. In this thesis, we identify the requirements for highly interactive multi-user VEs and limitations of collaboration over the Internet. We focus on the design, implementation, and evaluation of network communication infrastructures for multi-user virtual environments, also exploiting the multicast and quality of service (QoS) support introduced with IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol. We propose an architecture, VESIR-6, that combines the 3-D navigational and interactive capabilities of virtual worlds with the communication capability of the next generation IPv6 protocol to bring people together in one virtual world, regardless of their physical locations, in a platform-independent manner. The goal of the project is to get all the parties together in one virtual world, allowing them to see each other, to interact with each other, and to affect that common world in a secure and high-quality network infrastructure over the Internet.