Using gasp for collaborative interaction within 3D virtual worlds

Abstract

In this paper, we present Gasp, a General Animation and Simulation Platform, whose purpose is to animate autonomous or user-driven agents, and we explain how it can be used for Collaborative Virtual Reality. First, we explain its architecture, based on the notion of simulation objects (or agents) associated with a calculation part (the behavior). Then we describe how it is possible to distribute efficiently our agents upon a network in order to share the amount of calculation between several computers. Finally, as the visualization of a simulation is also a simulation object, we show that our architecture allows us to distribute several visualizations upon a network to share a 3D interactive simulation between several users. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000.