Controlling scalability of Distributed Virtual Environment systems

A Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) system provides a shared virtual environment where physically separated users can interact and collaborate over a computer network. There are three major challenges to improve DVE scalability: effective DVE system performance measurement, understanding the controlling factors of system performance/quality and determining the consequences of DVE system changes. We describe a DVE Scalability Engineering (DSE) process that addresses these three major challenges for DVE design. The DSE process allows us to identify, evaluate, and leverage trade-offs among DVE resources, the DVE software, and the virtual environment. We integrate our load simulation and modeling method into a single process to explore the effects of changes in DVE resources.