Multi-authoring virtual worlds via the World Wide Web

The rapid growth of the Internet has seen a range of Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) emerge that support virtual worlds, where users can interact with both objects and each other. However, little consideration has been given to the development of these environments and the provision of tools to allow users to manage them. This paper presents a web-based model for jointly authoring multi-user virtual worlds using the ideas of object ownership and division of the virtual environment at the object level. A brief description of an implementation and its more interesting features is also provided. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.