CAVERN: A Distributed Architecture for Supporting Scalable Persistence and Interoperability in Collaborative Virtual Environments

CAVERN, the CAVE Research Network, is an alliance of industrial and research institutions equipped with CAVE s, ImmersaDesks, and high-performance computing resources all interconnected by high-speed networks to support collaboration in design, training, scientific visualization, and computational steering, in virtual reality. CAVERNsoft is the common collaborative software architecture for CAVERN. CAVERNsoft uses light-weight distributed data-stores as the mechanism for managing a wide range of data volumes (from a few bytes to several terrabytes) that are typically needed for sustaining persistence in virtual environments. Multiple networking interfaces support customizablelatency, data consistency, and scalability that is needed to support a broad spectrum of networking requirements. This paper begins by describing a number of collaborative virtual reality scenarios developed by our laboratory as well as our collaborators, with the goal of identifying the key issues of networking and database management that are unique to collaborative virtual reality. From these the CAVERNsoft architecture is presented including a report on the current status of CAVERNsoft's development.