Hi John,
This sounds wonderful!
Hmmm... does multicast work over ordinary internet connections -- dial-ups
that most people have? I had a funny feeling that it required connection to
the backbone (I am actually not totally sure what that even is :)
If it does allow connection between common dial-ups then this is probably
the way we should be pushing. From my understanding of multicast it uses a
packet that isn't addressed to one individual, but to a group of people, so
each "server" only has to send one packet to all people receiving. And all
people "subscribing" to that address receive it. This is a great saving for
each machine.
Best wishes,
- Miriam
At 02:18 PM 13/11/2000 -0500, John A. Stewart wrote:
>Hi Miriam;
>
>(This is 'cc'd to JeffS, as I don't know if this site's return
>address is correct to put me on the list)
>
>What I have done is to "multicast" vnet. This means that I don't
>have a server; every person in vnet is peer to peer. It is fast,
>although not entirely reliable; and it scales fairly well.
>
>My goal was to put our audio/video conferences on VR; thus I have
>a design goal of 15-20 people. I don't have a login screen or
>anything like that; in essence, you just start, and there you are!
>
>The Audio is fairly neat; rather than the textual chat window, you
>simply walk up to (a group of) peopl(e), and start in. The same
>idea will work with any media; want to watch a tv screen in a
>store window? walk up to the window...
>
>In terms of breaking it up into different worlds; I have put the
>multicast addresses in the .wrl file, so that if you walk through
>a "portal", you are communicating on a different set of addresses.
>
>Now the funish part; I have spent quite a bit of time getting my
>linux VRML viewer up to snuff; it is, and as of last week I have
>put my attention back into the VNettish side of things. Right now,
>for instance, I don't send around state information, so people's
>avatars, names, etc, are not passed around.
>
>I have some stuff in the links section of my web page; it does not
>address quite a few of your concerns, but it does attack some of
>them.
>
>All my VNettish stuff is written in Java, so it should be portable
>to other platforms.
>
>John Stewart
>http://www.crc.ca/FreeWRL
>
> > Here are just a bunch of thoughts I have been having on the subject of
> VNet
> > possibly becoming distributed, or peer-to-peer, VR. That is, not having
> any
> > one central server -- using a distributed system of interconnected servers
> > like the web does...
How I wish I could enumerate PI easily
3. 1 4 1 5 9 2 6
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http://werple.net.au/~miriam
http://web.access.net.au/miriam
http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam
Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au
AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com
