DiVE
Distributed Virtual Environments (DiVE) is a new framework for virtual world applications, developed at the National Institute of Informatics.
Because of the limitations of Second Life and OpenSim for high volume and high speed simulations, we developed our own massively multiuser networked 3D virtual worlds framework (DiVE), based on Unity3D.
Current Features:
- Generic data synchronization
- Type conversion for transmission
- Event propagation (general broadcast)
- Persistency of user and virtual world inventory information
- User management (basic implementation)
- Input devices (driving wheel, game pad)
Features under Development:
- Secure communication (encryption)
- Inter-server architecture (cloud computing), e.g. to operate and synchronize geographically distributed servers for super-large scale experiments (>500 concurrent users) and network latency mitigation via local servers
- Private message channeling
- Dynamic subscription scheme
- Plugin API (Application Programming Interface) for easy connectivity of external simulators and resources
- Improved real-time synchronization (incl. client side prediction)
- Modular intelligence (e.g. area of interest estimation)
- Input devices (Kinect, iPad)
DiVE is currently used in the following projects:
- Multiuser driving behavior study on traffic congestion (collaboration with Smart Transport Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology)
- Super large-scale practice and training of eco-safe driving (collaboration with Hiroo Gakuen Junior and Senior High School)
- Study on multiuser driving and travel behavior under emergency evacuation conditions (collaboration with Delft University of Technology)
