Abstract: It will be well known that a so-called object-oriented approach to computer programming has become widespread over the past few years and applications such as large multiplayer games are no exception. A number of approaches to allowing objects to communicate with one another have been developed. One set of these approaches relate to allowing so-called distributed objects, which is to say objects distributed over a client/server system, to communicate with one another. With reference to applications such as large multiplayer games, dynamic real time distributed communications between mobile objects must be considered. Present day techniques, involving the use of simple TCP/IP or UDP/IP, CORBA or DCOM are unable to provide such real time dynamic performance.

Abstract: A distributed virtual environment includes one or more entities represented in the virtual environment by at least a conceptual entity-model, a dynamic entity-model and a visual entity-model each of the entity models being mutually independent. A server provides a conceptual-model manager, arranged to provide conceptual entity-models, one or more dynamic-model managers arranged to provide dynamic entity-models, and one or more client apparatuses arranged to provide a visual-model manager arranged to provide visual entity-models. Communications is arranged to allow transmission of messages between the conceptual-model manager, one or more dynamic-model managers and one or more visual-model managers.