METHOD OF SHARING COMPUTATION LOAD WITHIN A DISTRIBUTED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM

A method of sharing computation load within a distributed virtual environment system. According to the present invention, entities within a virtual environment are gathered in groups based on their interactions. All the entities that can potentially interact together are gathered in one group based on the Area of Interest (or aura) of each entity. The groups are then mapped onto the available servers of the network. Once a group is mapped to a server, the server will become responsible for managing interaction between the entities of the group. In addition, a server has to perform collision detection for the entities of the group associated with it. According to the present invention, the server is also responsible for replicating the interaction group it manages so that every client related to the group can see all the entities within this group. Thus, by mapping the groups to the server, computation load can be evenly distributed among the servers. Further, by sharing computation load based on interaction groups, a very large number of clients can be simultaneously connected to the virtual environment system.