[ODE] networking

[Peter Amstutz]

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I'll jump in here.  I really want to use ODE for my distributed multiuser
virtual reality system (http://interreality.org), hence the interest in
stable box stacking -- a virtual world would naturally allow you to stack
stuff on top of other stuff just like in the real world (and then knock it
down :-)

The system is peer-to-peer and designed such that each object in the
system has an authoratative instance, and the world is described by
hyperlinking objects together (which usually includes linking across
hosts) (lots more information about how this all fits together on the web
page).  For dynamics simulation, I intend to have a policy that the
authoratative instance is entirely responsible for the dynamic movement of
its objects, and nonlocal objects are considered more or less static.  So
the dynamics simulation is more or less consistant from the perspective of
each user (even if globally it's way off, as long as it looks okay)
without violating trust bounderies between hosts by manipulating objects
you don't control.

The problem with distributed simulation in the game paradigm is, of
course, users may cheat -- however the VR stuff I'm interested in is
intended to be social and not competetive, so there isn't really the same
notion of "cheating".

On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Nate W wrote:

> The thing that makes me want to avoid that model today is that physics
> takes a lot of CPU power.  Every client brings a fast CPU to the party...
> if there's a way to make use of that power, many clients together could be
> able to do much more complex simulations than a single server (or rather,
> "more complex that the server *I* can afford").  Ideally, it gets a lot
> cheaper to scale the system to support more users, becase each user brings
> enough CPU power to do their share of the computation.  Practically it
> will never be quite that scalable, but I still like the idea.
>
> If you can have each client simulate the parts of the player's body or
> vehicle, then broadcast the positions and orientations, the server's CPU
> requirements go down quite a bit.  Note that I'm assuming a game sort of
> paradigm here, but other scenarios could use other methods of assigning
> objects to CPUs.
>
> I'd elaborate, but I see that Anselm has already described something like
> what I had in mind, only better. :-)

[   Peter Amstutz   ][ amstutz@cs.umass.edu ][ tetron@interreality.org  ]
[Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the Internet]
[ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http://interreality.org ]
[ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey:  pgpkeys.mit.edu  18C21DF7 ]

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