Virtual playground: architectures for a shared virtual world

1. ABSTRACT This paper describes a shared virtual world with four key goals: a reasonable economic model; low latency for world synchronization; a hospitable environment for users; and affordances for social interaction. The first goal is supported by examining economic issues related to the design of commercially viable 3D virtual environments including issues such as allowing use of currently developed Web based content. The second goal is supported by underlying network support that combines a mixed set of Internet protocols and a mixed model of a central server for universal resource management and multicast based transaction distribution. The final two goals are supported through architectural design patterns and a literature review of social issues and personal representation in virtual worlds.