This paper presents a multicast approach to shared virtual worlds. A shared VRML world is described with integrated spatial audio in a freeware VRML browser. An implementation in Linux of multicast FreeWRL with the Robust Audio Tool (RAT) is presented. To support this audio enabled multicast VRML prototype, MVIP (Multicast VRML Interchange Protocol) is implemented as a Java program using the services of the Real-Time Protocol (RTP) and accessing VRML via the External Authoring Interface (EAI). CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: C.2.2 [Computer Communication Networks]: Network Protocols; C.2.4 [Computer Communication Networks]: Distributed Systems – Distributed Applications; H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation] Multimedia Information systems – Artificial, Augmented and Virtual Realities; H.5.3 [Information Interfaces and Presentation] Collaborative Computing.
John L. Robinson, John A. Stewart, Isabelle Labb&e