Collaborative 3D Environments over Windows Azure

Microsoft Windows Azure and other cloud platforms are potentially well suited for building and deploying rapidly scalable 3D environments, usable for multi-player online games or interactive 3D education and e-commerce. Such 3D environments need to allow cooperation and interaction of multiple users in a single world. This may be difficult to synchronize due to network and cloud-operation delays. We present the project on building 3D services in the cloud, an example implementation of such an application, a shared 3D Teapot in Windows Azure, and a measurements-based discussion of performance issues when the teapot is shared and actively manipulated by many simultaneous users.