Deriving communication sub-graph and optimal synchronizing interval for a distributed virtual environment system

Advances in multimedia and networking technologies allow the realization of the distributed virtual environment (DVE). DVE is a distributed system which allows many clients who are located in different locations (within a LAN or across a WAN) to concurrently explore and interact with each other in a high resolution, three-dimensional graphical virtual environment. Some of the potential applications of DVE are: teleconferencing, distributed games, distributed interactive simulation, collaborative groupware environments, etc. One challenging issue in designing a DVE is to guarantee that each participating client has the same consistent view of the virtual world. To provide this consistent view, the DVE needs to perform synchronization actions periodically. We present a methodology for deriving an optimal synchronizing interval. Our work is divided into two parts. In the first part, algorithms are presented to construct a suitable communication sub-graph for the clients. In the second part, we present the outline of how to derive the optimal synchronizing interval based on the proposed communication sub-graph using Markov chain theory and the fundamental matrix