A CORBA based platform as communication support for synchronous Collaborative Virtual Environment

This paper describes the use of CORBA middleware to support communication in a 3D synchronous Collaborative Virtual Environment called SPIN-3D: users interact simultaneously and work together on 3D shared objects. Shared objects are duplicated: each participant owns a copy of each shared object and our CORBA based platform allows to synchronize their state and to manage the session. Our platform supports two ways of communication: one using a remote method invocation mechanism for "one shoot" communication, and one other using streaming with CORBA for "flooding" communication.