DESIGNOFATRANSMISSIONPROTOCOLFORACVE

Virtual reality is a useful tool to train individuals for various different situations or scenarios. A single person utilizing a virtual environment can greatly enhance their skill set, but the greatest gain in skill is obtained when multiple users realistically interact in the virtual environment. To accomplish this, a network protocol must be designed to efficiently communicate vital information to participants in the virtual environment. The purpose of this paper is to document the design of a transmission protocol for a collaborative virtual environment (CVE). In addition, the network protocol was tested with a network emulator to understand how well the protocol functioned under various network conditions. When the jitter level was below 50 ms the transmission protocol was able to reproduce the smooth avatar movement even at transmission intervals as high as 100 ms. However as the jitter increased the transmission interval had to be kept as low as 10 ms to reproduce realistic human movement. Index Terms- Virtual reality, Computer interface human factors, Computer networks, Teleworking