A generalized perception filter for distributed virtual environments

A distributed virtual environment (DVE) allows a group of geographically dispersed users to interact in real time. To provide a usable system, interactions with objects and other users must be observed by participants with sufficient consistency and within a limited delay. However in a wide area network (WAN), there can be considerable communication delays between different users. The main effects will be in the visual mode of the environment, where delays can cause discontinuous state changes and jumps in the positions of objects. This paper presents a generalized perception filter for hiding the effects of latency due to communication delays. It extends previous work in this area by considering both periodic updates and updates due to a dead reckoning model. The algorithm is also suitable for DVE that are implemented using the High Level Architecture.