Solipsis: A Decentralized Architecture for Virtual Environments

Abstract

Lack of scalability is a key issue for virtual-environment technology, and more generally for any large-scale online experience because it prevents the emergence of a truly massive virtual-world infrastructure (Metaverse). The Solipsis project tackles this issue through the use of peer-to-peer technology, and makes it possible to build and manage a world-scale Metaverse in a truly distributed manner. Following a peer-to-peer scheme, entities collaborate to build up a common set of virtual worlds. In this paper, we present a first draft of the Solipsis architecture as well as the communication protocol used to share data between peers. The protocol is based on Raynet, an n-dimensional Voronoi-based overlay network. Its data-dissemination policy takes advantage of the viewdepedent representation of 3D contents. Moreover, the protocol effectively distributes the execution of computationally intesive tasks that are usually executed on the server-side, such as collision detection and physics computation. Finally, we also present our web component, a 3D navigator that can easily run on terminals with scarce resources, and that provides solutions for smooth transitions