Hello,
As was already mentioned, the issue of multi-user worlds is a large
issue but there are some basic ideas that can get simple games under
way. In case of sharing movements (translation and rotation), a simple
multicast/unicast of the new positions will do. Obviously this is not a
scalable system but you can use it to share the movements of cubes being
moved on remote computers.
If you are looking into streaming the 3D content itself as well as
sharing more complex messages then you have a big project on your hand.
We have been developing an MPEG-4 based solution to this that uses
Java3D for rendering. Our Java based MPEG-4 codec can be used to encode
updates in a scene (such as movement of objects) that can then be
transmitted over the network (using either TCP/IP or UPD multicast) and
decoded on the receiving terminal and displayed in Java3D. The Java
source code is available to all those who want to use it for research
purposes (and not a commercial application) so if you are thinking of
developing a multiplayer game, it might serve as a possible starting
point. You would still have to figure out issues such as:
network architecture (client-server or peer to peer)
transport protocol (TCP or UDP)
consistency
ownership
etc
I hope this has been helpful.
Mojtaba
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