ABSTRACT
The widespread use of both fast Internet connections and also high-performance graphic cards have made possible the current growth of Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE) systems. These systems allow multiple users, working on different computers that are interconnected through different networks (and even through Internet) to interact in a shared virtual world. This is achieved by rendering images of the environment as the user would perceive them if he was located at that point of the virtual environment. Each user is represented in the shared virtual environment by an entity called avatar, whose state is controlled by the user. Since DVE systems support visual interactions between multiple avatars, every change in each avatar must be notified to the neighboring avatars in the shared virtual environment.
