Collaborative Virtual Environment Standards: A Performance Evaluation

Collaborative Virtual Environments are virtual reality spaces that enable participants to collaborate and share objects as if physically present in the same place. These collaboration spaces require strict performance characteristics. Today there are many systems developed specifically for collaboration, including DIVE, CALVIN, and COVEN. At the same time, some relatively new standards that address multiuser virtual environments and shared spaces have become available. In this paper, we're going to evaluate available and emerging standards such as the High Level Architecture (HLA) and Open Community to determine if they appropriately address the needs of such environments.