Peloton: a Distributed Simulation for the World Wide Web

Peloton is a simulator that creates virtual environments for bicycle rides. Each simulation participant pedals a stationary bicycle that is attached to a local computer through a wheel rotation sensor and a pedaling resistance controller. The local computers are connected to a simulation server by the World Wide Web. Peloton’s virtual environments reproduce sights, sounds, and pedaling resistance from actual race courses. The visual component of a Peloton virtual environment is a synthetic, three-dimensional landscape which combines computer-generated graphics with images of road courses. The virtual environment provides simulation participants with force feedback through variable pedaling resistance which corresponds to a course’s changing terrain. Users may ride alone or with others. In multiparty simulations, the Peloton server maintains a shared environment for its users. Peloton is an experiment to discover ways to build virtual reality systems on the World Wide Web, and it is built using Web programming tools—Java and the Virtual Reality Modeling Language. This paper describes Peloton and discusses its implementation, focusing on issues associated with Web support for unconventional input/output devices and VRML support for multi-user shared environments, camera controls, and large scene segmentation.