An Introductory Tutorial for Developing Multiuser Virtual Environments

This paper is an introductory level tutorial describing how to implement a distributed multiparticipant virtual environment (VE). This tutorial is intended for students who are competent programmers and who now wish to implement a distributed multiparticipant application. We describe the fundamental concepts of distributed computing for multiplayer simulations and provide a concrete example, including C source code available via the Internet. The template program demonstrates a simple multiplayer, distributed application, where each player controls the position of a space ship, and communicates the ship's position data over the network. The template uses broadcast communication and a technique called dead-reckoning to improve performance. We give detailed instructions on how to obtain and modify the template, so that students can quickly create their own distributed applications. We conclude by briefly discussing advanced issues that are important when constructing more sophisticated multiparticipant VEs.