A Simulation Model of Object Movement for Evaluating the Communication Load in Networked Virtual Environments

In this paper, we propose a common simulation model that can be reused for different performance evaluations of networked virtual environments. To this end, we analyzed the common features of NVEs, in which multiple regions compose a shared space, and where a user has his/her own interest area. Communication architecture can be client-server or peer-server models. In usual simulations, users move around the world while the number of users varies with the system. Our model provides various simulation parameters to customize the region configuration and user movement pattern. Furthermore, our model introduces a way to mimic a lot of users in a minimal experiment environment. The proposed model is integrated with our network framework, which supports various scalability approaches. We specifically applied our model to the interest management and load distribution schemes to evaluate communication overhead. With the proposed simulation model, a new simulation can be easily designed in a large-scale environment.