Control of interactions within virtual environmetns

Abstract

A virtual object for use in an object oriented environment; the virtual object comprising at least a user-sensible aspect and further comprising at least a functional aspect; the said user-sensible aspect being encapsulated as a user-sensible encapsulation, separately from the functional aspect, which is encapsulated as a functional encapsulation.

Description

RELATIONSHIP TO EXISTING APPLICATIONS[0001]The present application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 233,478 filed Sep. 19, 2000.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for the control of interactions within virtual environments, and more particularly, but not exclusively to control of interactive relationships of three dimensional (hereinafter 3D) objects in distributed 3D environments.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Some applications are graphics based, and may, using what is commonly termed virtual reality, give an illusion of 3D space by situating virtual objects on a virtual 3D grid. Using immersion equipment, users can interact with this virtual environment. Additionally or alternatively, the 3D space can be projected on to a substantially flat or 2D surface such as a computer visual display unit (VDU), so that virtual objects are viewed on substantially 2D computer screens, yet nevertheless, an illusion...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017]It is a further aim of the present embodiments, to facilitate real time multiple client interaction with objects within the same networked virtual environment.

[0018]It is a further aim of the present embodiments, to limit the amount of data requiring transfer between the different nodes of a networked interactive computing. environment, to allow interactions with said environment to be transmitted to all clients in real time.

[0019]It is a further aim of the present embodiments to encapsulate the functionality of a scene and the objects within it, as a separate, though associated entity from the encapsulation of the display aspects thereof, thus allowing the association of different functionalities with the set of objects comprising an existing scene.

Problems solved by technology

In networked computing however, particularly with data-intensive, heavy applications, the speed at which applications run is often limited by the time required for necessary data to be transferred between the networked computers.

Increasing the running efficiency, and, in particular, achieving real-time updating of high-resolution 3D graphical displays to multiple users is a challenging aim.

In multiple-user, real-time networked applications however; the traditional object oriented programming approach has been found to be somewhat inadequate.

Transferring such large amounts of data between networked computers requires considerable resources in terms of bandwidth and / or transfer time.

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