A model and design of a fully distributed computing environment for virtual reality

With the evolution of computing technologies, both PCs and workstations have increased computing power with less cost in the recent years. This paper presents a model and design of a fully distributed virtual reality system, called Multiple User Distributed Simulation (MUDS) system, over a network of low-end computers. MUDS system is designed to provide a virtual environment for both a single user and multiple participants over a fully distributed environment. However, only the method and architecture of building a single user distributed virtual environment is presented in this paper. MUDS system adapts and modifies the concepts from High Level Architecture, which is designed by DoD of US to provide interoperability among distributed simulators. Compared to the other existing distributed systems, MUDS system provides a transparent interface among distributed tasks. The prototype of MUDS system has been successfully built in Institute of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Tamkang University. An experiment of using MUDS system along with the experimental result will also be fully discussed in the paper