Consistency Management for Interactive Peer-to-Peer-Based Systems

Consistency is a crucial requirement for Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments (MMVEs). Such systems provide virtual worlds in which thousands of users can interact in real-time. To realize a consistent world view for all users, a flexible consistency management is required which balances the responsiveness and the level of consistency in the system. In this paper, the authors present an approach for a consistency management for peer-to-peer-based MMVEs. The approach identifies users which actually interact with each other in the virtual world, groups them in consistency sessions and synchronizes all users in the session according to a synchronization protocol which is determined at run-time.